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THE FANCY. 



fyc. fyc. 



T. Miller, Printer, Noble Street, 
Cheapside, London. 



(^.fat&hvzA 



THE 



FANCY: 

& Selection from tfie poetical 3£Umains 



OF THE LATE 



PETER CORCORAN, 

of gray's inn, student at law. 



WITH A BRIEF MEMOIR OF HIS LIFE. 



" Nor need we blame the licensed joys, 
Though false to Nature's quiet equipoise : 
Frank are the sports, the stains are fugitive." 

WORDSWORTH. 






LONDON: 

PRINTED FOR TAYLOR AND HESSEY, 

FLEET STREET. 

1S20. 



6^ V 



-e^ 



PREFACE. 

It has been justly remarked by a great critic and 
biographer, that " the heroes of literary as well 
as civil history have been very often no less re- 
markable for what they have suffered, than for 
what they have atchieved." The Author of the 
present little volume is a strong instance of the 
truth of this remark; for few have squandered 
away the talents allotted to them so lavishly, and 
few have suffered more from their own melan- 
choly imprudences. A short account of his life 
will, perhaps, not prove uninteresting to those 
who may be amused with the sallies of a sad 
mind, seeking relief from trouble in grotesque 
gaiety and elaborate extravagance. 

Peter Corcoran # was born in the month of 

* The father and mother of Peter were Irish, but they left 
Carlow on their marriage. Peter partook more of the spirit of 
his father's country than of his own ; for the serenity of Shropshire 



VI 

September, in the year 1794, at Shrewsbury, a 
town not very celebrated for men either of talent 
or genius, but proverbial for the pride and arro- 
gance of its inhabitants, and for the excellence of 
its cakes. The parents of Peter were reputable,, 
but by no means opulent; his father however 
had, by patient care and rigid frugality, saved a 
sufficiency to support himself and his wife com- 
fortably and respectably : and he was enabled to 
place his son at the free-school in the town, and 
ultimately to give him that education at College 
and the Inns of Court which is required to fit a 
young man for the bar. How far the propriety 
of this liberal exertion on the part of the father 
may be questioned, will be seen in the course 
of this short but decisive narrative. Peter was 
sent to school at seven years of age. 

Mrs. Corcoran w r as often perplexed in her 
maternal feelings at suffering her son, in the ten- 
derness and insecurity of his youth, to dare the 
dangers and vices of a public school ; but her 
anxiety for his welfare and his renown overcame 

did not appear to have chilled the blood in his veins. He used 
often to remark that Randall was the most thorough bred man 
alive, — being of Irish parents but born in St. Giles's. 



Vll 



this natural apprehension, and she hushed to si- 
lence those fears which, had they been abandoned 
to their strength, would, perhaps, have prevented 
the loose life and early death which are now to be 
recorded. She would have taken him home, but 
she dreaded lest derision should fall upon her in- 
nocent son, — and lest her feelings as a mother 
should be laughed at as idle and weakly woman- 
ish. Peter was therefore permitted, at a very 
early age, to mingle with the world in little, — to 
tear grammars, break bounds, and pilfer orchards: 
— to fight nearly as soon as he could walk, — and 
to swear almost as soon as he could speak. He 
has often given a lively history of his labours and 
adventures, as the boy-servant of an elder boy ;— 
how he used to get the tea-things set, clean the 
shoes, and dress any little nicety for supper; — how 
he was lowered, at the risk of his slim young 
neck, from the bed-room window, to thin Mr. 
Danna's garden for the next day's tart; — how 
he carried fighting cocks for his master in a bag 
to a bye field, for what he called " an afternoon's 
play;" — how he escaped on a fine moonlight 
midnight to steal trout, or bathe in the chill and 
rapid stream of the Severn. These are but a 



Vlll 

slender portion of his recitals, but they will serve 
to shew the probation he endured, and will be 
some excuse for the frailties, gaieties, and aban- 
donment of his after existence. 

Young Corcoran was never very much ad- 
dicted to what he slangly termed " the hard-meat 
of the classics ;" but he learned, as other boys 
learned, — the lesson of the day ; and forgot, as 
other boys forgot, — the lesson of yesterday. It 
was not the fault of his masters that he thus be- 
came a night-prowler instead of a pedant; for he 
never ceased to speak of the unceasing applica- 
tion of the head master's rod, and of the gentle- 
manly kindness and care of his tutor*, (the third 
master) who, as Lord Byron says, " was the best 
and worthiest friend he ever possessed ; whose 
warnings he remembered but too well, though 
too late — when he had erred ; and whose counsels 
he had only followed when he had done well or 
wisely." This is, perhaps, not the place to enter 
into the question of the propriety of committing 

* This gentleman, the Rev. Mr. S , behaved most kindly 

to Peter at all times ; — a gentle master is the boy's first blessing 
under heaven: — and in this case Corcoran was blessed to the 
uttermost. 



IX 



young spirits to the dangers of a public school. 
But it is much to be feared that the natural wild- 
ness of Peter's mind was nourished in one, rather 
than restrained; and that the fatalities of his 
after life might be traced to such a receptacle 
of violent liberty. A better boy at heart than 
Corcoran could not exist, but he had wild blood 
in his veins that would flood his nature ; — and 
then self-controul was vain, and the controul 
of others disregarded or repelled with anger, as 
being impertinent. Peter was never idle; He 
was soon descried and allowed to be a most 
bitter lampooner of his school-fellows, if his 
spleen was provoked, — and to be an able cele- 
brater of youthful and heroic atchievements when- 
ever they called for song. His love of verse- 
making was thus early nourished ; he reaped the 
rich harvest of boyish applause, and to a young 
spirit the caresses and welcomings of kindred 
spirits are the golden grain of the field of fame. 
His early poems were all either bitter, melan- 
choly, or heroic, — much more so than could be 
expected in one so volatile, so daring, and so 
young. His father and mother hardly knew of 
his habits or his talents : they would, perhaps, 

aS 



have grieved over his rambling and predatory 
tricks; but would not have remarked upon 
his rhyming propensity, as it is more than pro- 
bable they never saw a couplet in their lives. 
His mother was a kind but rather illiterate wo- 
man ; his father always set down poetry as a 
synonyme for poverty. Perhaps he was right! 

The school days of young Corcoran were 
soon over, for those light and careless times have 
swift wings, and abide not long with any of us. 
There was little variety in the events of each 
week : — the school — the play-ground — the fields ; 
— the night — the window — the tree; — the dark 
wall — and the deep river; — these made up his 
existence. One hour he would be lost over his 
Phaedrus ; the next might ste him stripped and 
glowing with fierce young eyes, fighting a dis- 
orderly playmate " for love and glory." He was, 
perhaps, an impatient wooer of Latin prose ; but 
who, so well as he, could beat " one of his size," 
or say a smart thing, beyond his years, to his mas- 
ter's daughter, — or to the maid > while he was 
washing on a Saturday night. 

On quitting Shrewsbury (never again to return 
to it so happy!) he entered himself of Oxford, 



XI 

and there formed new acquaintances with the 
opulent and the extravagant. The innocent vices 
of his boyhood, for such they might comparatively 
be termed, were exchanged for the deeper fail- 
ings of advanced years : and he plunged into the 
gaming and drinking habits of his associates with 
an enthusiasm strange and dangerous. From this 
fatal life he partly recovered himself, by the 
energy and natural goodness of his own heart; 
and just as illness had left him in possession of 
noble resolves and shuddering repentance, he be- 
came acquainted with a young lady, who strength- 
ened his better thoughts, and freed him, when 
apparently irreclaimable, from the enthralling 
vices of his college life. 

It appears that he had been visiting at the 
house of a friend near Hanover Square during 
the vacation, and it was here that he became at* 
tached to the virtues, the accomplishments, and 
the beauty of his friend's sister. Young Corcoran 
was just emerging from a severe illness, and the 
languor, generally attendant upon it, gave to his 
person and his features the softness and sadness 
which are so peculiarly touching to the tender- 
ness of women. His very mind had become re- 



Xll 

fined by suffering, and he was anxious to appear 
in her eyes intelligent, subdued, just, and unvul- 
gar, and to hide from her knowledge the dissipa- 
tion and emptiness of his school and college life. 
He now breathed a new and a cheerful existence. 
He read poetry to her ; he wrote it. Her name 
crowned innumerable sonnets, and her image was 
mingled in many verses with pastoral fictions of 
retirement and happiness, and with classical 
wishes for unambitious ease — for the days of 
chivalry and romance, or the return of the golden 
age. The young lady of course became en- 
amoured of these attentions, and she listened 
with a pleasing willingness to Peter's pledges of 
love, and to all those little ebullitions of tender- 
ness of which young persons are in general inno- 
cently guilty, when they sit together, and look 
into each other's eyes. 

The father of young Corcoran now permitted 
him to leave college, and to enter himself of 
Gray's Inn, though he had taken no degree, and 
was therefore subjecting himself to a harder town 
probation. Peter took lodgings in Vine Street, 
Piccadilly, to be near the fair object of his at- 
tachment ; and it may be supposed that he looked 



Xlll 

more into her face than into the Lord Chancel- 
lor's ; and that he turned the curls on her fore- 
head oftener than the leaves of Coke : — certain 
it is he made little way in his legal studies. He 
might be said hardly to know Blackstone from 
the Law-List. 

Corcoran now wrote poetry vehemently, and 
flamed in the gorgeous pages of La Belle As- 
semble, or pined in the sober and pensive columns 
of the Gentleman's. The magazines felt the 
ardour or the melancholy of his hand, month 
after month ; and he has often said that nothing 
could equal the rapture, — the pride, — with which 
he perused his own productions, — reading over 
ai\d over, with solitary glory, — " Lines to a Lady 

weeping," or " Verses on hearing Miss 

sing!" The following is a specimen of the ef- 
fusions of his muse at this period ; — it is a favour- 
able one, being a piece written at the desire of his 
lady to an Italian air : — 

STANZAS. 

Hark ! Italy's music 

Melts over the sea ; 
Falling light from some lattice, 

Where cavaliers be : 



XIV 

And sweet lady voices 

Steal over the deep, 
To hush all around us 

The billows to sleep. 

Our gondola gently 

Goes over the wave ; 
As though it were dreaming 

To sounds that enslave : — 
We listen — we listen ! 

How blessed are we, 
Who hear this dim music 

O'er Italy's sea ! 

About this time the young lady went on a 
visit to some friends in Kent; and there never 
was known, it has been said, so devoted and 
anguished a parting. Peter vowed, till he had 
not a vow left to bless himself with ; and the lady 
wept, and promised to write unceasingly. There 
are some lines extant on this event ; but they are 
not good. From the day of the lovers' separation 
may be dated the ruin and death of young Cor- 
coran. He wrote warm letters, but the lady was 
not near to feed the flame of his constancy and 
ardour, and he therefore was driven by the eager- 
ness and natural enthusiasm of his mind, to seek, 
in other pursuits, new and exciting pleasures : 



XV 



not that his love decreased, — but from inaction 
it slept. 

It was in August, 1817, that young Corcoran 
strayed by chance into the Fives'-Court, to wit- 
ness a sparring exhibition by the pugilists of the 
day. The sight so delighted him, that he there- 
after could talk on no other subjects to his 
friends in the hours of conviviality ; and he has 
often been known to rise from the table in the 
earnestness of his descriptions, to shew a favou- 
rite hit, or a scientific parry. He sought an ac- 
quaintance with all the eminent pugilists, and in 
their society he snatched, what he considered, 
" the life of life," planning combats, eulogizing 
heroic merit, and encouraging " the noble art of 
self-defence," with an ardour and a delight which 
knew of no repose. 

The letters of young Corcoran now became 
less devoted to the cause of love, though still he 
snatched from the midnight an hour to write of 
the ability of Turner, and the genius of Randall, 
to his astonished mistress. He passed evening 
after evening at Belcher's house, (the Castle 
Tavern) the life of the company, — the favourite 
of his gallant associates ! The songs which he 



XVI 

wrote on his beloved topic were sung with rap- 
ture; and he himself often delighted a select 
party of the Fancy with an Irish melody *, or a 
musical piece written by the celebrated Mr. 
Dibdin. 

Corcoran, at this period, never missed visit- 
ing a fight; and the eagerness with which he 
rushed about among the livery stables to possess 
himself of a rapid horse and gig, would have been 
noble in a better cause. He laid money on the 
favourite men, and lost it; and these failures 
generally compelled him to draw upon his father 
for supplies, which his indulgent parent granted, 
to the manifest detriment of his worldly comfort 
and private repose. Peter now and then made 
up a match, and put his man into training; — 

* Peter used to relate, with great- glee, his singing Moore'? 
favourite melody, "Though the last glimpse of Erin with sorrow I 

see," at Belcher's house one night, when Captain B , the only 

critic in the room (except the fighting Oilman), protested against 
the bad English, as he called it, of the first line : — " Though the 
last glimpse of hearing with sorrow I see !" This was the same gen- 
tleman that would not pardon Ned Turner, who, having taken a 
glass of ale too much, struck him. The captain, in the morning, 
although Ned protested that the ale had overpowered him, and that 
he was not himself, quoted, against all apologies for inebriation, the 
Latin words, " qui facit per aljum, facit per se !" 



XV11 



hiring a person to attend him, and allowing him 
all the expensive and nutritious niceties, which 
the insatiable appetite of the combatant might 
require. Fowls and port wine were thus hand- 
somely demolished ; and Peter occasionally found 
even these of no avail on the day of contest ; but, 
on the contrary, he more than once saw the effects 
of two months sumptuous training ruined in 
twenty minutes. 

With the gloves, Peter was allowed to be no 
despicable hand, for there is reason to believe 
that he had taken repeated lessons of a sparrer of 
peculiar skill and agility. Peter was long, light, 
and active,* — possessed of good strength, and of 
no mean courage. He has made a good set-to 
with Eales, Tom Belcher, (the monarch of the 
gloves!) and Turner; and it is known that he has 
parried the difficult and ravaging hand even of 
Randall himself. His days were passed at this 
time in bed, or over Boxiana; his nights were 
exhausted at the tavern, and afterwards in bitter 
and solitary repinings at a life which he had not 
the energy to remodel. In recording this fatal 
waywardness, it is deeply to be regretted that 



XV111 



Corcoran had no friendly hand to assist him to 
the better path ; no kind voice to tell him of the 
life he should adopt: he needed none to adjnonish 
him of the life he led ; — for his midnight hour of 
solitude brought him the bitterest reproach he 
could experience. 

The study of the law appeared a marked 
object for every light and unfortunate pursuit to 
aim a successful dart at. Peter now wholly 
neglected it. His days became useless to him 
from the weariness which the preceding nights 
of gaiety and dissipation had provoked, — and his 
jaded mind was compelled, in the same exciting 
sources, to seek a forced relief from enervation 
and despondency. He drank, — he betted, — he 
sang: — but the patient hour of self-reproach 
would come ; and then he wretchedly felt what 
he had lost, and what he was losing, and made 
desperate resolutions, — to break them in the 
morning ! His muse abandoned all hope of at- 
chieving any thing great or good, and it was with 
this feeling that he wrote the following Sonnets. 
When it is recollected that they were composed 
by a despairing, self-ruined man, they may, to 



XIX 



feeling breasts, assume a pathos, though in them- 
selves they may have it not. 



SONNET. 

Were this a feather from an eagle's wing, 
And thou, my tablet white ! a marble tile 
Taken from ancient Jove's majestic pile, — 
And might I dip my feather in some spring, 

Adown Mount Ida, thread-like, wandering : — 
And were my thoughts brought from some starry 

isle 
In heaven's blue sea, — I then might with a smile 
Write down a hymn to Fame, and proudly sing ! 

But I am mortal ; and I cannot write 

Aught that may foil the fatal wing of Time. 
Silent, I look at Fame : I cannot climb 

To where her temple is — Not mine the might : — 
I have some glimmering of what is sublime — 
But, ah ! it is a most inconstant light. 

P. C. 



XX 



SONNET. 

I ONCE had thought to have embalmed my name 
With Poesy :— to have serv'd the gentle Muses 
With high sincerity : — but Fate refuses, 
And I am now become most strangely tame, 

And careless what becomes of Glory's game — 
Who strives — who wins the wondrous prize — who 

loses ! 
Not that the heavy world my spirit bruises ; 
But I have not the heart to rush at Fame. 

Magnificent and mental images 

Have visited me oftentimes, and given 
My mind to proud delights — but now it sees 

Those visions going like the lights of even : 
All intellectual grandeur dimly flees, — 
And I am quiet at the stars of heaven ! 

P. C. 

About this time he wrote a slang description 
of a fight which he had witnessed, to the lady 
while she was on a short visit at Esher, accom- 
panied with his Sonnet to Randall. He received 



XXI 

in return, as might be expected, a grave remon- 
strance. The lady says, with affectionate sim- 
plicity and frankness, — 

" Could you have seen the anxiety 
with which I glanced my eye over line after line, 
and page after page, in hopes of meeting with 
something that was intelligible, and (shall I add ?) 
interesting ; and had you witnessed my disappoint- 
ment in beholding two whole sheets, and half a 
third, devoted to the subject of a ' mill between 
Belasco and the Brummagem youth/ you must, in 

spite of yourself, have pitied me."- " Can it be 

possible, my dear Peter, that you did derive so 
much pleasure as you describe, and that you ' la- 
ment that it is not given to poor human nature to 
forget such a sight at will, so as to have the grati- 
fication, arising from seeing such an exhibition for 
the first time, sixty times over'? Good heavens! 
you are quite enthusiastic! and on such a subject 

too ! " " I cannot thank you for the Sonnet. 

It is no doubt clever, but I was too sick of the sub- 
ject to enjoy it. " - 

Perhaps Peter was nettled at this return for 
his pains and his puns*, or (to use a term he 

* Application was made for Corcoran's first letter, which must 



XX11 

has often used himself,) he was too much imbued 
with the pugilistic spirit to receive without re- 
turning. He replied in terms to deepen his 
offence — 

" MY DEAR KATE, 

" I assure you I am not fibbing, when 
I say, I regret that my last letter proved so severe 
a punisher to you. You have, however, returned 
upon me pretty smartly. You have quite hit me 
off my pugilistic legs, — doubled me and my letter up 
at a blow, — and actually floored me. And though 
(as this may serve to show) you have not altogether 
' taken the fight out of me,' yet you see I come 
very languidly up to the scratch; and this will be in 
all probability the last round in which I shall pre- 
sent myself before you in a milling attitude. You 
are too much for me. I am but a light weight, and 
you carry too much gravity. My rally ings are of 
no use. If I make a good hit, it does not tell upon 
you. You are too well guarded. I waste my wits 
and my wind to no purpose : if I try to plant a 
tickler upon your ribs that shall shake your sides, 

have been a curious one, but without success. It seems to have 
happened to him, as it has to others, to have his works properly 
appreciated only when their poor author is in his grave. 



XX111 

you laugh at me, instead of with me ; and finally 
put in a write-hander upon me by the post, that dis- 
ables my jaw and drops me. There is no standing 
up against such a rum customer as you are. So I 
shall in future keep myself out of the way of such 
punishment. 

" Alas, for poor Fancy! — If her flowers meet 
with so nipping a reception in the neighbourhood 
of her own Moulsey, she may as well, (like Lord 
Castlereagh's crocodile,) put her hands into her 
breeches pockets ; or turn them to any thing else, 
rather than double them into fists. She had better 
at once cut down her gloves into mittens, and put 
her fingers into rings, instead of going into them 
herself." 

On the return of his young mistress to town, 
Corcoran for a while absented himself from the 
haunts of pugilists and of the Fancy y — being in 
some sort influenced by her presence : but he 
was always unsettled and heedless, and he sat 
late, and forgot himself before her in the histories 
of his favourite subjects. Differences naturally 
arose between the lovers on his altered habits ; 
but he had become hasty and intemperate, and 
she, from being disgusted at his follies and his 



XXIV 

faults, gradually alienated her heart from its first 
affection. The lady did not consider herself 
faithless, for Peter was not the same that she had 
loved previous to her Kentish visit. On one oc- 
casion he appeared before her in the day with 
two black eyes, and with other marks of the pre- 
ceding night's skirmish on his way home. The 
lady from this moment forbade him her presence, 
nor could she ever afterwards be persuaded to 
relent, though he sued to her in that fond and 
penitent style, which bespoke in him an unde- 
cayed affection. Some lines appear in this selec- 
tion which he wrote to her soon after this un- 
fortunate event, thinking that she would listen to 
his humour, and forget his misconduct : but she 
returned the stanzas upon his hands, and from 
this identical copy the lines have been printed*. 
His letters of expostulation to her were dictated 
by a steadier pen and a more sombre mind ; but 
these met with the same fate. In one of his let- 



* Peter was a great admirer of Mr. Coleridge's poem of " Love," 

and he appears to have lost his mistress on the following fallacious 

principle : 

" She loves me best, whene'er I sing 

The songs that make her grieve." 



XXV 

ters he says : — " You cannot imagine, my dear- 
est Kate, what I suffer by the recollection of that 
idle quarrel, and the still more idle verses which 
it occasioned. If you continue unforgiving, I 
have no one left to make life cheerful. My own 
good opinion is lost. My nights are torture to 
me : — but I seem now to have no inducement to 
wish them better or quieter. I might, perhaps, 
escape from folly, if any one would rejoice at it, 
or 'welcome me back to the world.' " In an- 
other letter he writes, as if in the provocation of 
sorrow and despair: — " To-morrow I go to 
Randall's fight ; — but I think if I were recalled 
by you, I could break my promise to my com- 
panions, and pass a day of happiness and forgive- 
ness with you. Try me, my dear Kate !" It is 
most probable that she never attempted to re- 
claim him ; but it is much to be lamented that an 
endeavour was not made by her : — for from her 
influence alone, could such a measure have been 
effected. 

The health of Peter, which had been some 
time declining, now became rapidly altered for 
the worse ; and he fell into the most dangerous 
state, apparently without a struggle on his part to 

b 



XXVI 

avoid it. He was gay, active, and spirited to the 
last, with the exception of his nightly visits of 
melancholy, and occasional fits of despondency 
by day. In reality, life had lost its importance to 
him. 

In the last weeks of his existence, he employ- 
ed himself in writing light pieces of poetry for his 
own amusement; — thus living over again the 
pleasures of which in health he had so eagerly 
partaken. A few of these, and but a few, are 
now printed. The spirit of poor Corcoran was 
thus triumphant over pain, and thus did it remain 
till his departure. His father was with him at his 
death, and witnessed that heart-rending sight, the 
termination of a consumption, that complaint 
which flatters even in its conclusion. Peter 
wished to see his mistress, but she declined the 
interview. He was, as Dr. Johnson says, " inex- 
tinguishably amorous, and she inexorably cruel *." 
He died very recently without a struggle, just 
after writing a Sonnet to West-Country Dick. 

It is impossible to contemplate the youth, the 
talents, the fate of this young man, and not lament 

* Life of Hammond. 



XXV11 

that he should not have applied himself to some 
pursuit steadily, so as to have filled a worthy 
station in life. At one time he seems to have 
partly recovered himself from the trammels of sad 
society ; but the fascination of pugilism and its 
professors was too strong in his eyes, and he 
sealed his ruin and his death by a devotion to its 
pleasures. A fight was to him a resistless attrac- 
tion, and he has often declared that he never was 
so thrilled with enthusiasm, as when that moment 
arrived at which the men stripped against a fine 
sun, and advanced like trained blood-horses, to 
start for the prize. Peter caught cold upon cold 
at these diversions; and certainly to an infatuated 
and unrestrained attention to such pursuits his 
death is attributable. Pugilism in itself is a 
manly and noble science, — but it is apt to se- 
duce its admirers into evil ways and corrupting 
society. 

The person of Peter Corcoran was tall and 
slim. His features were of a pleasing expression, 
particularly when they were excited by any sud- 
den feeling of enthusiasm. If any belief could 
be placed in the system of Gall and Spurzheim, 
the head of Corcoran would have explained to 



XXV111 

any person skilled in the study of such system, 
that Peter's passion for fighting was greater than 
men in common possess. His organ of com- 
bativeness was unusually large, so much so as to 
be repeatedly remarked by indifferent observers. 
The very name of Corcoran is expressive of pug- 
nacity, or an intense inclination towards butting 
and battering. Vide Calasio, in voce CD WD*. 

* There is a sort of craniology in names, by attending to which, 
a Biographer, who knows but little of his subject, may derive as 
much certain information as his betters. Spenser, who read 
Sackvillc's voug in his nomen, (to express a meaning by the mar- 
riage of Greek and Latin,) says, 

" Whose Muse, full of high thoughts invention, 
Doth like himself heroically sound!" 

The nameof our immortal Shakspeare is composed of two Hebrew 
words, signifying " beautiful plays." There was also a mysterious 
meaning in the Christian name of Will, often played upon and 
riddle-me-riddle-me-ree'd in the Author's sonnets, which ought to 
have set antiquarians upon the acent, long before Malone found the 
Will itself in a hayloft at Stratford! — Mr. Gifford might have 
learned that Mass-singer was a Catholic, without drawing heavy 
inferences like an editorial carthorse. — Pope, of course, could not 
help being a Papist, — if there be any help in it ! — Suckling had 
too much of the milk of human kindness in him to fight, let 
Octavius Gilchrist say what he will. — Sprat was, as Mr. Southey 
observes, the smallest of the poetical fry : How could he be other- 
wise ? — Gay wrote the Beggars' Opera ; his monosyllabic title pro- 
mised to do it, and kept its word ! — Savage foretels his fate, in his 



XXIX 

His style of writing is not good ; it is too 
broken, irresolute, and rugged, — and is too anxi- 
ous in its search after smart expressions to be 
continuous or elevated in its substance. Cor- 
coran was remarkably fond of puns, as his works 
will exemplify. He wrote with great rapidity, 
when he could bring himself to write at all ; but 
he more often commenced than concluded works ; 
and it was a common case for him, to plan and 
open a new piece at night which was neglected 
or forgotten in the morning. 

He had few friends : — and it cannot be denied, 
in spite of his faults, that his mistress was harsh 
and relentless, beyond the run of women in gene- 
ral. Few ladies would have frowned so long, 



name. — The rich metal with which Goldsmith wrought his works is 
plainly foretold. — Cowper and Cowley were intended for pastoral 
poets, and Somer-ville was by nature cut out as the laureate of the 
hunting box. Bacon could never have meddled with the spring of 
poetry. It was only by a dry-salted philosophy that he saved his 
name, Broome did all the dirty work of the muses, and Mallet 
was but a tool in the hands of Bolingbroke. The list might be con- 
tinued for several pages, but the reader is referred to the Biogra- 
phical Dictionary, passim. It may be stated in conclusion, that 
there was actually a celebrated Bruiser of the name of Corcoran, an 
Irishman, who lived in the time of Figg and Broughton. His 
name warranted his profession. 



XXX 



who appeared at one time to love so well. The 
woman that can retain her stern disregard through 
a long siege of letters and verses, is either singu- 
larly high-principled, or superlatively unfeeling. 
Peter, with all his heedlessness, was the only con- 
stant lover of the two, for he remembered her on 
his death-bed. The lady still lives, and is married. 
When she reads this imperfect memoir of Cor- 
coran, she will surely feel some contrition at 
having repulsed him to the last, instead of having 
lured him from the fatal and fascinating errors 
that generated his death. 

The works selected for publication are but a 
small portion of those left in MS. by Peter; if 
this little volume should be well received by the 
Public, the Editor may be induced to offer what 
Addison has happily called, " more last words of 
Mr. Baxter." 



KING TIMS THE FIRST: 



AMERICAN TRAGEDY. 



# # # The Editor is very doubtful whether 
the American tragedy which he now presents to 
the public, and which he discovered amongst Mr. 
Corcoran 's papers, very neatly written in his own 
hand, is the work of that intelligent and indefa- 
tigable spirit, or whether it was really received in 
the manner hereafter described by himself. If 
he had any failing, it was that of indulging too 
much in those literary deceptions for which this 
age has become tbo infamously celebrated. It 
would have been to him a source of peculiar de- 
light, if he could have imposed the following pro- 
duction on the world as an American work, when 
it was known to the circle of his select friends to 
be the performance of his own ingenious mind. 
He was fond of inflicting the glory of his little 
productions on the names of his acquaintance, or 
his favourite authors ; and it is this known pro- 



pensity in him that creates the doubts in the mind 
of the Editor as to the origin of the present piece. 
It would, however, be assuming too much to say 
that fe was the Author, as the introduction and 
notes, which are assuredly by him, authorise a 
contrary inference. The piece is printed exactly 
as it was discovered, and the Editor refrains from 
hazarding further conjectures concerning it. 



KING TIMS THE FIRST 



AMERICAN TRAGEDY. 



INTRODUCTION. 

This little piece is the first literary work, I be- 
lieve, of the Back Settlements; and whether it be 
one of those flashes of merriment with which Mr. 
Birkbeck has been wont to set the trans- Atlantic 
tables in a roar ; or whether it be a bud of Mr. 
Flower's culture, I cannot, from any information 
I have received, venture to decide. There is 
a plain, unvarnished, querulous spirit running 
through some of the speeches, which might lead 
the reader to ascribe it to the one, whilst the easy 
moralities of many of the passages might induce 
him to give it to the other. But it would hardly 
be fair to hazard a conjecture in a matter of such 



moment; literary property in America being quite 
as valuable as any other species of property 
there. Whoever the author may be, he has the 
merit of starting as the literary Adam of the Set- 
tlements : — the first of men among the poets of the 
Illinois ; — a sucking dramatist on the shores of the 
Ohio ! There are too many " marks of favour" in 
the work, to warrant the supposition that any per- 
son living on the banks of that trading and strapping 
stream of Castaly, the Thames, could have fabri- 
cated it ; and I do not think any of my country- 
men would have gone so far for a catch, thougli 
they are said by their neighbours to be liable to 
exportation for things of perhaps a minor value. 
It is much easier to say to whom this little work 
does not belong, than to name any living author 
whose brain could have bred it. It is not som- 
bre, egotistical, lofty, or licentious enough for 
Lord Byron : — it is not gay, chivalrous, and won- 
derful enough for Walter Scott. Moore would 
have said something about roses, or Ireland, or 
Lord Castlereagh in it: — Rogers would have 
written nothing about butchers or Tothill Fields. 
Coleridge would have left it unfinished, or gloomed 



it with metaphysical lore : — Wordsworth, the man 
" not ungently made/' would have turned it to a 
preparatory school for the brain's poor children, 
and put a pedlar into it, to talk a linsey-woolsey 
philosophy in uninhabited woods. If Southey 
had been the author, the piece would have been 
longer and more sanctified. It is too genteel for 
Crabbe — and Montgomery is no dab at a bull- 
bait. I cannot count it out into sonnets, as a 
cheesemonger parcels out his halfpence on a 
Saturday night, or I might discover that Mr. 
Bowles was concerned in the work : and there is 
no fling at Buonaparte, nor any mention of Bri- 
tain's glory, to call Fitzgerald's name in question. 
Dr. Busby also is too busy in picking out damn- 
able comedies for Mr. Elliston, or rather, as my 
"learned friend" Mr.Sugden more correctly terms 
him, for the Great Lessee, to allow of his poetical 
indulgences. Indeed I may put the negative on 
any name, and pretty safely; but I have no means 
of " giving the world assurance of a man," to 
whom it may ascribe this little versified American 
history. There is a delicate modesty in the work, 
which can only be found in the dawn of a coun- 



try's poetry. There is no mercenary mark in any 
line. In England the Muses evidently beat out 
their compositions into profitable lengths, mak- 
ing one line for love, and a dozen for money; 
they will even sell, like the dealers in Irish linen, a 
single piece : and Apollo now-a-days impudently 
smacks his breeches' pocket in the publisher's 
face, and sells by weight. Here we plainly see 
a devotion to fame, and a total forgetfulness of 
pounds, shillings, and pence. 

The piece came into my hands in a strange 
manner. I requested a friend to procure for me 
a copy of the small American edition of Waverley 
and Guy Mannering, to present to a young lady 
who, strange to say, read books, and wore poc- 
kets ; and I requested him also to forward it when- 
ever he found an opportunity. He purchased the 
books, and left them (as he has since explained in 
a letter) in his hut, reading them occasionally to 
beguile the more laborious amusements of lamb- 
slaughtering and wood-cutting, or the felling of 
trees and bullocks. An opportunity, however, of 
conveying the volumes suddenly occurring, he in- 
closed them in some loose sheets of paper which 



he found in his room the morning after a party of 
settlers had been visiting him, and committed 
them to the care of a friend. The packet reach- 
ed me safely. On turning over the wrappers, I 
perceived that they were written upon ; and 
curiosity leading me to enquire further, I perused 
the contents of the following pages. This is a 
plain statement of the manner in which I dis- 
covered the work, and of the particulars my 
friend has related in explanation of his mode of 
obtaining it. 

It is proper here to state, that thinking the 
originality, truth, and vigour of the performance 
great securities for its success on the stage, I 
ventured to inclose it to the managers of Covent 
Garden Theatre — 

" As giving it a hope that there, 
It might not withered be !" 

I thought the jaded treasury of that house might 
be refreshed by its " success on representation/' 
(as the declining circular prettily phrases it,) par- 
ticularly as the figurative language*, majestic 

* My days go Jive in nine for food." 

Vide the work, passim. 



8 

country for scenery, and enterprising characters 
would allow of the piece being got up with con- 
siderable costliness of real asses. The regular 
cast iron answer, however, accompanied it back. 
I was also informed by a very intelligent gentle- 
man attached to Drury Lane, that it would be 
useless to submit such a work as the present to 
the Great Lessee, for that he would shrink from 
its political bearing, as from the touch of snails 
or snakes. So much for the treatment to which 
a great national production is exposed, when 
offered to a great national theatre. Is the war 
against America never to cease ? 

The piece, as a literary composition, is surely 
entitled to much praise, for it is evidently a thing 
of portentous conception and careful delivery : as 
a faithful picture of trans- Atlantic comfort and 
content, it is most highly curious and interesting. 
A little must be allowed for the flights of fancy; 
but enough, after such allowance, remains to shew 
that Virtue is in the New World easy enough in 
her habits, and that Liberty is there but a Maid of 
all work. I am a little surprised to see mention 
made of kings and queens among the inhabitants : 



— " The many still must labour for the one !" 
Divine right, it appears then, is sowing her po- 
litical seeds on the other side of the Atlantic. 
The songs please me greatly, inasmuch as they 
intimate that harmony is in some degree pre- 
served amidst this industrious and enterprizing 
people. 

I shall throw the few observations I have fur- 
ther to make on the piece, such being rather 
critical and illustratory, into the form of notes, 
and append them to the several passages to which 
they may belonge I can only say, in conclusion, 
that I think History and Poetry have in these few 
pages handsomely clubbed their means to " make 
a goodly piece of work of it." 

This tragedy never soars out of the reach of 
common understandings, and yet it is " not too 
tame neither." It is strictly familiar, but by no 
means vulgar. We hope it will stand as fair a 
chance of success as the Life of Hardy Vaux # , 

* The Life of Hardy Vaux is a daring little book, that escapes 
the literary police of the Reviews miraculously. It is truly the 
spirit of the author, picking pockets in its master's absence. It 

B5 



10 

which is the first fruits of a Family Man in Bo- 
tany Bay, another interesting settlement : — I can 
pledge myself that the author of this work went 
voluntarily out of this country, for my friend 
would not associate with any gentleman who had 
stood up to his middle in rue at the Old Bailey ; 
or had left that celebrated receptacle for convicts 
and boiled beef at the Recorder's request. He 
never had his face under a looking-glass # # The 

is the Slender Billy of Mr. Murray's shop* After reading a few 
pages, you unconsciously filch the handkerchief out of your own 
coat flap, or secrete a half-crown in the corner of your own breeches 
pocket. The apparent virtue in vice, and candour in cunning, 
which attend Mr. Vaux, give him an alias which innocent readers 
are but poorly provided against. He talks of putting his hand in 
at a shop window, as if he were speaking of putting it charitably 
into a poor's box ; and his exemplary self-accusation, when in con- 
finement, makes you his friend. When he cheats and is dis- 
covered, he apostrophises fate ! and he speaks of pick-pockets and 
concubines, as though they were persons of " the most uneasy 
virtue." His book, like mine, is a stranger in England, and there- 
fore who would shut the door in its face ? but I advise my readers 
to beware of swindlers, and to lock the drawers before they permit 
the volume to lie on a table. The morality and chastity of the 
following work are greatly and admirably relieved by a comparison 
with the life of Mr. Vaux. 

• This same looking-glass slanting over the faces of the pri- 



11 

author appears to have had a high relish for my 
simple and favourite pleasures of pugilism, bull- 
hanking, " and its appurtenances f (resorting 
again to the conversational style of my friend Mr. 
Sugden). There is a peculiar pathos, to me 
quite touching, in the groups of recollections 
which straggle about the writer's memory in a 
solitary world, where a twenty-four feet roped ring 
could not be made for love or money. My In- 
troduction has held out to a very unjustifiable 
length, (and, indeed, I have latterly been critical 
in spite of my first intentions,) but I could not 
consent to the risk to which so erudite and origi- 

soners at the bar of the Old Bailey, is surely a cruel invention ; 
and tends rather to make a man a false witness against himself, 
than to throw any satisfactory light on the subject. It turns the 
features meagre and livid j the rosiest face of the worthiest alder- 
man would " 'gin to pale its ineffectual fires " under such a re- 
flector. Indeed, it must shed its baleful influence on the minds of 
the jury ; for if the prisoner be confident, it makes him look har- 
dened ; if he be innocent, it makes him seem cunning. I think such 
a looking-glass a villainous invention truly, and recommend it to 
the notice of the Society for the Suppression of Vice; — by the 
bye, I wonder whether any of the members of this notable society 
ever saw their own faces in it! 



12 

nal a work as this would be exposed, by being 
ushered into the world without " drums and 
trumpets." 

P. c. 

Gray's Inn, 1819. 



DRAMATIS PERSONS. 



MEN. 

King Tims (late a Butcher on Dow gate Hill)* 
Anthony Tims (his Son, and Heir Apparent). 
Mr. Minister Hatband (late an Undertaker in Fleet 

Market). 
Mr. Jenkinsop (lately ruined). 

WOMEN. 
Queen Tims. 

Mrs. Jenkinsop. 

Miss Jemima Jenkinsop. 

The Scene is laid in the Back Settlements of North America. 
Time, half a day. 



KING TIMS THE FIRST 



AMERICAN TRAGEDY. 



SCENE I.— A WOOD. 

Enter Miss Jemima Jenkinsop on one side, in a red mantle, 
and with a small bundle of sticks in her hand — she advances 
pensively, Anthony Tims comes in at the hack of the 
scene, during the following plaintive appeal of this young 
lady* 

MISS JEMIMA.— -SONG. 

air, " London now is out of Town *." 

I'm in love, but I have not 

Got a lover to me $ 
Would the savages were not 

So savage not to woo me ! 

* This is an aptly chosen air for an emigrants song. Miss 
Jenkinsop is a little slang in her language, but a lady is driven 
upon her resources in so uninhabited a spot. 



16 

Unless married, I can't be 

Happy wife, or widow — 
Either is the same to me ! 

Tol de riddle lido ! 

Tol de rol, &c. 

I have got a faggot here, 

Aye, and quite a bad one $ 
Were I married, p'rhaps my dear 

Might think that he too had one : 
Would Mneas Tims were nigh, 

I would be his Dido ! 
Wishing now is all my eye — 

Tol de riddle lido ! 

Tol de rol, &c. 

Ragged days and hungry nights 

Forc'd me o'er the water j 
Settlements are no such bites ! 

I'm still starvation's daughter : 
Victuals here, and victuals there, 

Make me quite a sly doe 3 
Jarvey-like, I steal a fare — 

Tol de riddle lido! 

Tol de rol, &c. 



17 

Love at home made large amends, 

There all hearts were suited ; 
Women pick'd their favourite friends, 

And husbands got cornuted : — 
Here (my tale gets short) no head 

Buds with horns — and I do 
Lead a very life of lead — 

Tol de riddle lido ! 

Tol de rol, &c. 

I catch here no white man's voice, 

Listening makes me know so 5 
Black men now are Hobson's choice, 

And therefore they are so so : 
I, to win a shady man, 

Must do as I did do \ 
Cock my eyes, and so trepan— 

Tol de riddle lido ! 

Tol de rol, &c. 

Thus do I sing in sorrow till I'm sick : 
My reminiscences are cut in stick 5 — 
I notch a faggot as days go — 'tis good 
To keep one's memory, like new wine, in wood. 
Oh ! here is no mankind — no frisk — no food — 
No love — no nothing : — this, oh ! this is solitude* ! 

[Turns aside, and weeps, 

* This reminds one of Lord Byron's lines on Solitude — but 
the pathos here is of a deeper and more elaborate kind. 



18 



Anthony Tims (advances). 

A. T. It is Jemima Jenkinsop ! I know 
Her swanlike stateliness and darn'd manteauj 
The Yankee breeze than England's seems more 

fair — 
Aye, this here suits her, better than that air. 
For an old song I'll try to get her mine : — 
" Whither, my love ! " — no, that's too high ! — 

J. J. That line !— 

That voice — that look — the rapture — the surprise — 
That flaxen hair — those grey, light, loving eyes — 
That single-breasted coat — that sweet snub nose — 
Those inexpressibles : — I know the clothes, 
The eyes, the hair, the voice, the legs, the man - } — 
My senses sink, and I'm not worth a fan ! 
But, sinking senses, aid the lower limbs, 
And bear my fainting carcass to my Tims ! 

[She drops the sticks, and falls into his arms, 

A. T. Why, what are these?— are bludgeons 
wanted here, 
In Freedom's undivided vale, my dear? 

J. J. These are the harmless branches of the 
trees, 
Broken by chance, and gather' d by degrees, 



19 

To make our peaceful fires. But what — oh, what, 
To this most rude and solitary spot, 
Allured those dear parentheses of legs ? — 
Tell me?*— It is your own Jemima begs — 
Tell me what brought you here ? 

A. T. —I will, I will- 

Sitting one night at home on Dowgate Hill, 
I said, said I — and Father said, said he, 
" We're deep in debt — deep, most confoundedly." 
And soon we proved, by exercise of wit, 
Deep in the method of escaping it. 

J. J. Go on, go on, — I pant to hear my fill ; 
Well, you were deep in debt on Dowgate Hill — 
Well !— 

A. T. Says I, " Father, ere our purpose cool, 
Get down, by hook or crook, to Liverpool $ 
Haste to the Settlements, and take my mother, — 
I'll see you off, and stay to bear the bother ! " 
They fled — I told a lie, and sold the goods, 
Some kettles, bedsteads, tables^ curtain-rods, 
And fled the spot. I knew 'twas not too late 
To run, — or (I should say) to emigrate : — 
So with a light trunk and a heavy heart, 
I lurk'd about your house to kiss and part 5 



20 

But missing you—somehow my way miss'd me, 
I cross'd the lock*, yet could not find the quayf. 
What with weak spirits, and strong rum and water, 
My road grew longer, as my sense grew shorter $ — 
At length I straggled in, depress'd and late, 
To the Nag's Head, beyond old Billingsgate. 

J. J. Oh, Anthony — how strange thy trials were ! 

A T. I rose up early — came away, my dear, 
Leaving my reckoning as a recollection 
To the full-bosom'd Landlady. — Affection 
Look'd o'er the vessel's bow, and guided me 
To this untroubled land of liberty. — 
How long hast thou dwelt here, my love ? 

J. J, To speak 

The truth, I have not sojourn'd here a week. 
We're come to settle — (see these sticks) 5 my Pa 
Found in his cup of life a little flaw ; 
We came, with Ma, on cash our Cousin lent, 
Forward to get, in this Back Settlement. 

A. T. Exquisite sympathy ! My Pa and Ma 
Are king and queen here ! — you'll make subjects ! 

* Mr. Anthony Tims (sometimes per elision called Tony Tims) 
is not above an innocent pun. 

t Query » — Key ? Printer's Devil. 



21 

J.J. La! 

What made them king and queen ? 

A. T. A sudden thought ! — 

They crown'd each other — (crowning goes for 

nought) $ 
And each new law proposed (since there was none 
To contradict) was pass'd at once, nem. con. 

J. J. How came you not to take me in your 
trouble ? 

A. T. My grief was weak, and could not carry 

double ! 
The times were hard, — I thought your heart the 

same, — 
I had no wherewithal to feed the fiame -, 
And, without fire and food, vain is Love's cauldron $ — 
(And coals, my dear, were 7^ the chaldron.) 
Confus'd I felt, 'twixt passion, truth, and want, 
And getting straiten d, thus enlarged upon't : — 
Marriage makes two at dinner; that's about 
As bad, where teeth are in and victuals out, 
As Harlequin, at Christmas, with the gout ! 
So, says I, I'll live single ■ 

J, J. Oh, enough ! 

My sentimental heart is up to snuff. 



22 

But we are here 3 we must adore -, we'll meet— 
(If I take time or tea, I like it sweet !) 
We'll meet by stealth. 

A. T. We will. And I'd contrive 

To get friend Hatband (he is here alive) 
To give my letters to you of a night — 
But you can't read, my love ! and I can't write. 

J.J. Hatband, the Undertaker, of Fleet Market ! — 
Does he come here on commerce, or to lark it ? 

A. T. Trader no more 3 he banish'd pall, and urn, 
And nail, and glove, and cut the whole concern. 
My Pa, King Tims the First, in old costume, 
Reigns in the open air, or in one room 5 
Butcher no more, his royal state is kept here — 
Scale yields to crown, the cleaver to the sceptre : 
You see their nothingness is made secure, 
And the king's self does hold a sinecure ! 

J. J. Soft, Tony Tims ! Pa's voice upon the gale 
Steals in hoarse freedom over Freedom's dale* ! 
He bawls for wood. I go — we meet again j 
Partings and toothach are alike for pain. 

* Coleridge speaks of America " as Freedom's undivided dale." 



23 

A. T. You go—you fly—adieu ! Beware the 
men ! 
One chaste salute !— Another !— Oh ! a third !— 
Tis virgin honey, ma'am, upon my word !— - 
Adieu ! 

J. J. Adieu ! 

A. T. Adieu ! All tender hopes 

Twine round thee, Jonquil of the Jenkinsops ! 

[Exit Miss J. J, 

A. T. [solus] Thus when two tomtits sit upon a 
bough 
Chirping together, some rude dog's bow-wow 
Frights one away $ the other picks his wing, 
Squats on his little tail, and tries to sing :— 
So I, my bird being bark'd* away, remain, 
Left to the comfort of a tomtit strain, 
Pluming my inexpressibles, ere long 
I clear my bill, and twitter into song. 



* This may be a pun on the bawling for wood : — It is impos- 
sible to say. 



24 



SONG. 

air, " Sure such a day." 

Love! what is love, but the blister' d heart's can- 

tharides, 

Sent to sting the jaded life, and drive it mad ? 

Man, girls trepan, and the moment that he married 

is, 

All his time is lost in getting brats and bread : 

Lovers pine, and weep and whine, about the cheeks 

and lips o' girls, 
Rave, and sadly brave common sense, in praising 

gypsy girls 5 
Waste, in hot haste, often sober love on tipsy girls. 
Love ! it makes a crack'd and empty pipkin of 
the head ! 

Would that I could but scramble from this fever fit, 

Chill my heart with Plato's ice, and sleep at night! 
I seem to lie all trembling like a leveret, 

Petticoats keep playing in my startled sight : 
Woman's heart, a cruel part ! is for the most part 

red in slaughter ; 
Hymen ne'er, while she can stare, will be a single 

wedding shorter. 
I will try, to mortify, by fasting upon bread and 
water, 
And make the fiush'd and heated cheek all cold 
and white ! 



, 25 

My song being ended, — none to cry encore, 
No gallery voice to call the strain once more, — 
I turn to go 3 — but going, Fancy finds 
A lad in the one-shilling please the winds 
With his engaging whistle, and " ancore;" 
And so I turn about, and sing the same words o'er. 

SONG*. 

* This song is in the original MS. here repeated word for 
word, and savours therefore somewhat of tautology. My printer 
was very desirous that 1 should conform strictly to the copy \ but as 
I never yet heard of an encore in printing, I declined indulging 
him. Mr. Tims, I really think, comes forward upon very slight - 
grounds with his repetition ; and I cannot help thinking that he must 
have read a very erudite work called t( Advice to Actors," in which 
are these words ; " When you have indifferently sung an indif- 
ferent song, pause at the side scene ; and if you chance to hear a 
lad in the gallery call out encore, come forward, and sing it again-— 
it shews respect." 



26 



SCENE II. 

A wooded spot — in the lack an unfinished and rude skeleton * 
of a hut — tools thrown about — King Tims the First with' 
out his coat, and with his regal sleeves tucked up over his 
royal elbows — Queen Tims and Mr. Minister Hatband at 
work. 

King T. Cease we our work $ our royal brows 
feel heat, 
We will relax — we are relaxed ! — we sweat ! 
We've driven a hundred tenpennies already.— 
Give us the keg, we'll pull a little Deady f. 



* The original stage direction here was too figurative I thought, 
and therefore it has been altered. It stood thus ; — " Scene II. — 
A sylvan scene — In a retired nook an imperfect and ungainly 
carcass of a cottage — Wise saws and other edged implements 
sprinkled about." I give it thus in a note for poetical readers ; 
but in the text it is translated for the benefit of country gentlemen, 
and those whom Mr.Cobbett is pleased to call "the lower orders." 
t Deady, — full proof gin ; so in the play : — 

" best proof of love ! Tis full proof Hodges too ! " 

Here the name of the inventor is put for the thing invented ; thus 



£7 

Q. T. We're hungry, please your Majesty j and 
drinking 
Will never make us less so, to our thinking ! 

K. T. Come on our right hand, Queen $ Hatband, 
draw near. 
Speak, Mrs. Tims ; open thy mug*, my dear ; 
Mouths here are made to speak, and not to eat — 
We do not sit, — because we have no seat. 

Hat. Logical Tims ! I think, since, please your 
crown, 
Our work is at a stand f, we may sit down. 
An Undertaker loveth liberty. — 
So wheresoe'er my home or shop may be, 



the spirits of men are permitted to survive in their productions. 
Mr. Tilbury and Mr. Dennett, long after death, will run about 
town in the shape of gigs ; and Mr. Spencer still exists without his 
flaps, and shall possess a long, yet curtailed, popularity. Mr. 
D'Oyley takes his wine with us every day after dinner; and 
deathless Jem Belcher wreathes round our necks the very emblem 
of immortality. 

* The mouth, not the mouth's visitor. 

t It will be found that all the characters in this piece are ex- 
ceedingly antithetical ; their words, like themselves, are opposed 
to each other. Men, as I may philosophically say, are made up 
of debt and antithesis ! 



28 

At the Fleet Market, or the Trans-Atlantic, 

My heart shall ever be sedately frantic 

In Freedom's holy cause. I've had a call !~ 

Q. T. Then pray return it in the name of all. 

K. T. You blunder, Mother Tims 5 his call is 
great ! 
A call above all cards — to emigrate ! 
Your royal intellect is in eclipse 3 
The ruin you've drawn down upon your lips, 
Has made it rather foggy. 

Hat, To my mind, 

Her Majesty with grief or grog is blind ! 

Q. T. Would I were reading in the midst of 
meat, 
In our first butcher's shop in Friday Street ! 
Oft, when the fly-flap flourished to and fro, 
And flies leap'd startled from their own fly-blow, 
I hung o'er Werter's * page, and sad mishap, 
Suspended in the air the fleet fly-flap, 

* This line originally stood — 

" 1 hung o'er Wordsworth's page, &c." 
I have ventured to alter the name, to avert from the worthy Poet 
that sneer to which his undeviating sublimity so little entitles him. 



29 

Forgot the insects — lapsed in tragic fears, — 
And gave a loose to maggots and to tears ! 

K. T. You then lov'd Little, Mrs. Tims $ and 
read 
His t€ hot-press'd lyrics " on cold nights a-bed 5 
You read them early, and you read them late, 
They were so tender, touching, or elate — 
So circumstantial, yet so delicate ! 

Hat. I have one poem — it is " Human Life j" 
Funereal, dirge-like, free from rub or strife 5 
Its lines, its fate, are both together cramm'd — 
A mingled essence of the dead and damn'd ! 
Some copies have been sold, some spoil' d by flies, 
Some eat by worms, two purchas'd as supplies 
For club-nights, by sedate Burial Societies ! 

K. T. Quit we these subjects, Hatband! they 
remind us 
How very bare of subjects here we find us. 

Hat. No subjects mar my trade — for none can 
die) 
And buryings without bodies are — my eye ! 
I wish'd you'd stiffen— that 1 might inclose 
Your royal limbs, and measure to the toes. 



so 



jfif. T. What, measure me! Great Job*!— oh, 
grant me breath ! 
Flat treason 'tis to compass the king's death ! 
No more ! There is a fence f — a ditch— a drain — 
Doth, as I've somewhere read, our life maintain. — 

Q. T. The cares of government, with other cares, 
Stand round the throne, and thicken on the stairs 5 
Pain is well in, and patience nearly out — 
I have the rheumafiz J, and you the gout. 

K. T. Our spirits droop, — we'll raise them with 
a song — 
A something noble, and not very long. 



* We presume his majesty meant to appeal to Jove here ; but 
the confusion of the moment, and the great similarity of the name, 
may well excuse the mistake. 

t I presume his majesty to allude to the line — 
" There's a divinity doth hedge a king ! n 
which, however, he appears very confusedly to have held in re- 
collection, or not to have correctly comprehended. 

X The queen is probably the very lady who is reported to 
have complained of a violent rheumatix, and to have been advised 
to use essence of mustardism. Her majesty's orthography, like 
Lord Duberley's, is " a little loose." 



31 

Well I remember how our chirpings put 

The heart's door open, when the shop was shut. 



GLEE. 

air, " Scots wha ha\ <$c* y 

Folks who've oft at Dolly's fed ! 
Folks who've nibbled Batson's bread ! 
Folks who've ta'en a Hummum's bed ! 

Come not o'er the sea : 
Victuals here are but so, so j 
Hollands, too, run very low $ 
Scarce is coffee and cocoa ; 

Sojourn where you be. 

Now's the time, and now's the hour, 
For little bread, there being no flour 5 
Liberty's a glorious dower — 

Though ragged, let's be free ! 
We will walk the unlopp'd wood, 
And taste what Nature grows for food- 
Grumbling here does little good t 

So hail, glad Liberty ! 



32 

Hat. I would we all were swans* — for then, my 

friend, 
Good consequence this singing would portend. 
You lure your neighbours from their homes, friend 

Tims; 
Setting on steady bodies, vagrant limbs ! 

K. T. Have you not seen a pigeon, wheeling, 
fly 
Above a pigeon-house seducingly, 
And whisper Emigration to the sky ; 
Lure one and all — the full-plumed and the moulter, 
The tumbler, and the carrier, and the poulter — 
Take them to other dove-cotes, there to die, 
And leave no inmate for the pigeon pie 1 — 

Thus But our son— our prince — our nation's 

boast, 
Comes like a pilgrim of the penny f post. 



* I need not remind my readers of the * belief that swans sing 
immediately before their deaths. After hearing the vocal attempts 
of some of my friends, I often wish that such musical propensities 
and fate were reversed in their order. 

t King Tims could surely not be ignorant of the rise in post- 
age; but his strict attention to rhythm would not allow him to put 
on another pemiy. The line then, to speak in becoming language, 
would have been over-weight. 



33 



Enter Anthony Tims. 
A, T. Mother, prepare ! the Jenkinsops are here. 

Q. T. Our son, alas ! is smoking us, we fear. 

K. T. Subjects are come at last, then! — King, 
indeed ! 
I'll fall a taxing them, to prove my breed. 

Hat Feathers and mourning-coaches, two and 

two, 
Light up the air, and sparkle in my view*. 
Oh, nail! — oh, pall! — oh, mute! — And are they 

come? 

A. T. They are ! 

Q. T. They're not ! 

A. T. They are ! 

* We have again to remark upon the confusion of language 
here. An enthusiastic undertaker is, however, not amenable to 
the established law of metaphor. He is not easily moved to 
rapturous figures of speech, but being moved, he is perplexed in 
the extreme. 

c 5 



34 

K. T. Oh, lovely chum ! 

You, or your son, have told a bouncing hum ! 

Hat. Now may I see a neighbour cock his toe — 
Walk by his side in black — in well paid woe ! 
When shall I have a long man-box bespoke ? 

K. T. Queen ! — (Pshaw, friend Hatband, give 
us leave, you croak!) — 
Put on your robe of trade — we'll make us big 
With our best plush — a hem — and frizzled wig. 
They're here — the lady looks a little grimy — 

v A. T. I fly to meet and succour Miss Jemima ! 



Enter Mr. and Mrs. Jenkinsop. 

duet. — air," At hyd y nos.'\ 

Lawk-a-daisy ! Lawk-a-daisy, 

Sweet Mr. Tims ! 
I am mad — my wife is crazy, 

Sweet Mrs. Tims ! 
You are kings, — your son was stating j 
We will be your folks in waiting : 
What strange work is emigrating, — 

Sweet Mr. Tims ! 



35 

K. T. We hear a voice from England — blessed 
/ sound ! — 
We'd rather have it than an unforg'd* pound ! 

Mr. J. You are the king, friend Tims! 

K. T. We are !— (the same, 

As if in England we should say — I am !) 

Mr. J. We've brought all friends — all necessa- 
ries too — 
One pound of tacks, and half a pound of glue. 

K. T. Friends! — necessaries! — all of no account, 
Unless you've brought with you Sir Walter Blunt f. 

[Slapping his pockets. 

* A homely tradesman the other day was addressed by one of 
the Inspectors of the Bank of England, with whom he was on 
friendly terms, with, " Well, Mr. Plasterer, how are you?" to 
which honest Plasterer, with true trading propriety answered, 
* Pretty well, thank'e ; how are you, Mr. Paper-Hanger /" This is 
a genuine fact. We hope the literary inspectors will not think this 
note a forgery. 

t This is an evident play of his majesty upon the word " blunt," 
put fiashice, as Mr. Crib says, for money. It is a common phrase 
among pugilists, and they often declare that a match is off, because 
the " blunt is not ready." Mr. Jenkinsop enters pleasantly into 
his majesty's facetiousness, as his answer shews. 



36 

Mr. J. True, King! — 'tis certain — you, as well 
as I know, 
Nothing is done on earth without the rhino ! 

Mrs. J. I have not said much, — but I think a 
deal — 

Q. T. Most ladies do, who play their cards with 
zeal. 

K. T. We break the conference up — the hour 
drags on $ 
Come, gentle Jenkinsops, we'll all be gone ! 
80 have I seen a flea, in blanket yellow *, 
Linger in quiet, like a steady fellow 5 
And all at once, without offence or fright, 
Frisk, with his jumping comrades, out of sight! 
So have I seen — But you are tired — and I 
Will put my simile aside, and try 
To bring it to a finish, by and by ! 

[Exeunt all but Hatband. 

Hat. [solus] Do I keep several mourning 
coaches, — thus 
To vex my life with Trans- Atlantic fuss ! 

* It is impossible not to remark upon his majesty's proneness 
to similes. Mr. Tims is a prodigious likener. 



37 

I love Jemima, that all-furnished fair — 
Love her ! aye, better than a hearse and pair ! 
She comes — I'll pop the question. Can it be ? 
It can't— -I see she has some company : — 
She, like an angel looks, — she does — does she 5 
He, like a devil, — that he does — does he :— 
I'll — — take another opportunity ! 
He stoops to tie her shoe — 'twill take him long 
Enough, to give me time to sing a song *! 

SONG. 

When once at the Clerkenwell Sessions, 

1 stood up to hear an assault ; 
A girl set me at my confessions, 

She nudg'd me — and was it my fault ? 
She turn'd round, while I was caressing 

Her waist, thinking no one could see ; 
Says she, Sir ! you're really so pressing, 

Says I, Ma'am, why they're pressing me ! 

Her eyes were all sweetly in mourning, 
Her hair beat the plumes of my hearse ; 

She attended my heart of a morning, 

And my head of a night, which was worse : 

* The easy manner in which the songs are here introduced is 
recommended to the notice of all writers of musical pieces. They 
follow like a part of the dialogue. 



S8 

The fields, when she laugh' d, became greener — 
The sky, when she look'd, became blue ; 

I always would rather have seen her, 

Than brass nails, and mutes, two and two ! 

She comes — another suitor comes also ! 
I will not stay a moment — that I vow. 

[Exit Hatband. 



Enter Anthony Tims and Jemima Jenkinsop. 
A. T. Just so— I do agree with all you've said. 

Miss J. Well, Tims, that is exceedingly well 
bred! 
We'll sing, with your permission. — 

A. T. Madam, yes ! 

For once — (upon your mind this truth I'd press) — 
I sang a ditty at the Cock and Bottle, 
With such good will, and with so clear a throttle, 
That Mr. Chubbycheek, who fill'd the chair, 
Swore through his fat, that it was more than fair ! 
Your Mother sings, I know ; and so does my Ma ! 
Therefore we're vocal bred, no doubt, Jemima! 



39 

On second thoughts, we'll not sing now, my dear, 
For you're so very hoarse, and no one's here ! 

Miss J. Just as you please — your will's my hap- 
piness ! 

A. T. Pure are the lives we lead here 5 and a 
stress 
We lay upon our grand and antique dress ! 

Miss J. We're pure, indeed ! — no snow in June 
is purer : 
Your virtue, Tims, is sure— but mine is surer ! 

A. T. No thought pulls up the vent-peg of my 
mind, 
To let in air that is not quite refin'd. 
I think in saintly order — snowy Miss ! 
Give to my icy lips a virgin kiss. {Salutes her smartly. 
'Sbobs ! I declare, it does not smack amiss. 
But strangers come : we'll pair away like Members. 
The flame of love awakens in its embers ! 

J. J. Your clothes are spare— the very molds 
peep out, 
And jaded button-holes* let their tenants out) 

* This word must be spoken of a lump, trippingly off the 



40 

I see your elbows, Prince!— aye, through that bare 
rent ! 

A. T. True, true, Jemima ! — I am Heir Appa- 
rent ! 
Go, go — I follow — couples come this way — 
I will but meditate : — nor longer stay, — 
Than just to sigh — it is my sighing day ! 

[Exit Miss J. J. 

A. T. [alone] 

Divine Philosophy, with Euclid * eyes 

And Newton * hair, and — I philosophize ! 

And yet — so let me reason as I may, 

I can't forget an early chaunt, — a lay,— 

Though what's the use of wisdom in a wood? — 

Oh ! sophisms are a bore in solitude ! 

I'm all alone— morality be light ! 

Let frisky Memory chaunt of old delight ! 



tongue, out of respect to the measure. Mr. Bayes's directions to 
Lightning, as to his manner of uttering his own name, might here be 
quoted; but the book is not at hand. 

* I cannot at all guess at the meaning of these allusions. This 
passage is rather metaphysical. I may say, with old Doyley, 
" Ah ! this must be deep, for 1 don't understand it ! " 



41 



SONG. 



I've had my sport at Tothill Fields, 

I've sunn'd myself at Gooseberry Fair 5 
And all the lark that Greenwich yields, 

Has fallen to my Easter share : 
I've shy'd with stick, to win a bit 

The backy-box of brown japan 5 
And shin, and pin, and box I've hit 5 

And often pitch'd, and broke the man ! 

I've loung'd at Dog-fights— noiseless scene! 

A half-bred* betwixt calf and calf) 
I've blown a gentle cloud f, I ween, 

Over my gentler half-and-half J ! 
A Bait hath given me rich delight, 

While loud would rise the rapturous shout, 
When brute with brute began to fight, 

And horns were in, and bowels out ! 

* A brute, half terrier and half bull-dog, — partaking of the 
sharpness and alacrity of the one, and of the courage and obstinacy 
of the other. This creature is reckoned the best mixture for a 
fighter. 

t Blowing a cloud is the poetry of smoking a pipe. Vide the 
Blue Posts— the Nag's Head — the Castle, &c» 

$ The marriage of porter and ale — or porter and stout. 



42 

I've watch'd the Bruiser's winning art, 

To lure his friend into his arms ; 
And punch his head with all his heart, 

Commingling all the face's charms : — 
I've watch'd the seconds pat and nurse 

Their man - 7 — and seen him put to bed - y 
With twenty guineas in his purse, 

And not an eye within his headf! 

At Rowing matches have I been, 

Where naked bodies tug for coats ; 
And Bankside beauties have I seen, 

Sit drinking rum in little boats : 
And oft on Sundays, scorning land, 

With braces loosen'd from the breech $ 
I've pull'd a girl, with blister'd hand, 

And bleeding heart, through Chelsea Reach ! 



t We had prepared a long note on pugilism and pugilists, but 
Mr. Shelton, to whom we submitted it, consulted Jack Randall 
and Bob Burns on the subject, and they are unanimous in opinion 
that it is too erudite for these pages. It will, therefore, be length- 
ened in matter, and corrected by these eminent men in the gram- 
mar and metaphors, and published in a book by itself. 



43 

Long at Fate's E O table, I 

Have play'd, and met at last a loss $ 
Gone odd or even* with the sky, 

And tried the sea at pitch and toss : — 
But all is over, — here I am, — 

My days go Jive in nine for food 5 
And I can have no other game, 

But playing hazard in a wood ! 

Dull Innocence! I waddle on, — 

Thy weary worshipper — and fain 
Would give thee up, to be a Don, 

And beat the watch in Drury Lane ! 
The air here feels no hats thrown up, 

His dog no costermonger catches; — 
Farewel to bull, and stake, and pup, — 

And pipes, and gin, and rowing matches ! 

Hark ! some intruders ! 

[Exit hastily, 

[The dusk of evening comes suddenly on, as on the English 
stage often ; hut flashes of soft Summer lightning give suffici* 
ent light to shew King Tims with Mrs. Jenkinsop entering 
tenderly on one side, and Mr. Jenkinsop and the Queen equally 

* Every gentleman who has sported his money, will understand 
the games alluded to in this stanza. 



44 

kind on the other. TJie whole of this part is mysterious, and 
the speeches are uttered aside.] 

King T. [to Mrs. J.] I left him fast asleep, in- 
deed, my dear — 
His drows'd mug nodding o'er the unfinished beer, — 
So hush thy virgin plaints and matron fear*. 

Mr. J. [to the Queen] He thought I slept— I saw 
him hurry quicker, 
Across the room, having first prigg'd the liquor : 
He left it — and I came, my dove, to thee, 
To coo, in virtue of our liberty ! 

Mrs. J. I tremble for our love ! — warm as it is, 
Our passion, Monarch, ne'er would equal his ! 

Queen. T. May his old Majesty ne'er kiss me more : 
His kiss I cannot bear — it is a bore ! 

[A flash of lightning betrays the parlies to each other — the 
clouds withdraw, and the evening moon makes one of her usual 
exposures. The two wives throw themselves at the feet of 
their husbands.] 



* This line is a little confused ; — but it stands thus in the ori- 
ginal MS. 



45 

K. T, What ?— -Treason in our sucking Settle- 
ment! 

The Queen. We own ourselves unfortunate — our 
bent 
Is liberty and virtue ! 

The King. I must fight ! 

Jenks ! we must feed on Honour's slugs to-night. 
What can appease the fury of a King? — 

Jen. A little reasonable reasoning ! 
We're cuckolds! — granted : and our wives are jades ! 
Let us agree — though following the same trades. 
No one is by : — well change our ribs, and then 
Try to get into virtue's path again. 

The King. No ! my steel dirk, made out of an 
old steel, 
First search that bosom — next make this heart feel - } 
Then for these fatal women — there — and there : — 
Now four are massacred — that's just two pair ! 

[The King, in furtherance of this pathetic speech, stabs 
himself, his friend, and the two spouses, in the order in which 
his speech sets them.'] 



46 

The King. We have it !— We are trotting off to 
hell: 
Ladies ! You'll claim your dower — we die— farewel ! 

Jen. That thrust you gave me, Tims, has prov'd 
a nettler — 
Your stab turns out, what I have been, — a Settler ! 

The King. My eyes get hazy— reels the dancing 
light — 
I die — turn down the rushlight $ — Ma'am, good 
night ! [Dies. 

Jen. He's gone— how very muddy some folks 
die !— 
He's for the cold meat cart*, and so am I : — 
Get out, you cats ! — you've used us d— — y ! 

[Dies. 
[The Queen and Mrs. Jenkinsop take hands, and lie down 
hj their respective huslands.~\ 

DYING CHORUS OF WIVES. 

Gentle maids — should any here 
Chance to come, and chance to hear 
Of our fates — be more severe 
To your wedded mates : 

* Cold meat cart — a hearse. 



47 

Would they bind you to their beds, 
Break their hearts, or break their heads : 
Cats * are free upon the leads, — 
Must wc have harder fates ? 

The man the license gets at first $ 
We get our license at the worst, 
When we're with a helpmate curst : — 

Marry to be free ! 
And now we die — and now we're gone — 
To the pit of Acheron 3 — 
So, Molly put the kettle on, 

Let's have a cup of tea ! [They die. 

Enter Hatband, fo llowed by Anthony Tims and 
Miss Jemima Jenkinsop. 

Hat. [starts] They're dead — a contract job, I smell! 

A. T. They're dead !— 

For how much will you bury them per head P 

* At this line it would be criminal to forget Joe Grimaldi (a 
richer Joe than Mr. Miller, " mine ancient Joe-ker") in a certain 
pantomime, which he oiled with his face, and set upon the springs 
of his legs. His song at night with the cats can never be forgotten. 
" Oh! it came o'er the tiles like the sweet south!" His voice, most 
cat-like, seemed to pur upon the night ; and the cats filled up each 
dreary pause between with their incessant and guttural sounds. 



48 

I burst with grief !— No coffins are required- 
Lump the whole set !— My breast with woe is tired 
One grave will hold the flock. My parents, too ! 
How did they die ? Let's have no more ado* ! 

Miss J. My Pa and Ma are gone — then I come in 
For all their goods and chattels, — wine and gin ! 

A. T. I fear they were not faithful — but they're 
gone,— 
Nil nisi bonum: — Nothing's left but bone ! 

[Exeunt. 
Hatband [alone]. 

1 will inter my friends with honest pleasure, 
And snatch an hour at once to mourn and measure : 
They're gone— a jolly four— they make me blubber,— 
A comfortable number for a rubber ! 
Is this the Settlement where Liberty 
And Virtue dwell? — Yes — thus 'tis to be free ! 
Vice has its revel — woman has her antic — 
Man plays his cunning — in the Trans-Atlantic ! 
Intrigue, and woe, and shame, haunt ev'ry place ; 
And Emigration does not mend the casef! 

* This speech is incoherent j but grief renders a man so. 
t The moral comes in very late — but better late than never, 



THE 



FIELDS OF TOTHILL: 



A FRAGMENT. 



# # # The Poem from which the present Canto 
is selected, was written before that clever, ramb- 
ling little story, yclept Beppo, appeared; but I 
believe that Corcoran had seen the national sped- 
men which Messrs. Whistlecraft of Stowmarket 
had published, — and that he chose his measure 
from that facetious performance. Peter has suf- 
fered his muse to play most fantastic tricks before 
the Public ; but though she is skittish, she is de- 
cent ; and unlike her sisters, who generally figure 
away to the Italian measure, it may safely be said 
that she never shews more than the ancle. The 
first Canto scarcely ventures into the story, being 
much occupied by the indecision and gaiety of the 
author, — and, perhaps, he is rather too indecisive 
in all that he notices ; but he is so unreserved in his 
misgivings and his wanderings, so candid in his 
communications, and so amiable in his explana- 
tions, that it is thought the public will love it if 



5% 

only for its record of Peter's eager, rattling, 
rambling, and fanciful nature. 

There are two other Cantos finished, but the 
Editor did not choose to hazard their publication 
till he was informed, by the success or failure of 
a portion of the Poem, of the manner in which the 
whole would be received. Some few stanzas have 
been omitted on account of severe allusions to per- 
sons whose feelings the Editor and the world re- 
spect, and to whom Peter could only have alluded 
harshly in those hours of feverish irritation and 
lonely depression which visit all persons at times, 
and none more than men of ardent and poetical 
temperament. 



THE 



FIELDS OF TOTHILL: 



A FRAGMENT. 



The Gods have made the Brother Smiths poetical, 
As Touchstone saith, though not of either Smith $ 

And there hath, too, been many a great and petty 
call 
Of Bards on either side the Thames and Nith. 

But verse, like ink, must be a kind of jetty gall, 
Or folk will think it not worth meddling with t 

Most men of any nous will tell you this, 

From Juvenal's time:— (This stanza's not amiss !) 



54 



II. 



I long to be a writer of the rhyme j 

And since men may be Poets, and not know it, 
Why may not I be fit for the soft crime 

Of linking language with the view to show it. 
I do not make a fuss about <e all time,'* 

Give me to be the fleeting darling Poet, 
That simmers on the pot of life, and then 
Is skimmed away with other scum of men. 

III. 

Epic is not my passion $ nor thin lines 

To thinner dames, who sicken on romance j 

Nor the slim elegy, that crawls and whines 
Like German women through a solemn dance. 

I hate the language or the lass that pines -, 
And epigrams are far too apt to glance 

Away, ere we can win them j so that I 

Am very hard to please— but I must try. 



55 



IV. 



I have no notion what I mean to do, 
Though I have started with the pen in hand $ 

But if a man his whim or wish pursue, 
'Tis ten to one he safely comes to land. 

I've heard of men whose very errors too 

Have caught the plan their reason never scann'd $ 

As some who have been swearers — sad oath givers — 

Have ta'en to blasting rocks and damming rivers. 



V. 

There is no doubt that stories told in verse, 
Of ruffian suitors, most successful prove $ 

Of dames that take for better or for worse 
Knights, quite as full of fight as full of love : 

The cant must be kept up that life's a curse, 
(A lover's oath, nought else.) For Venus' dove 

Is but a very pigeon when 'tis pluck'dj — 

Even she herself in early life was duck'd. 



L 



56 



VI. 



How fine are Wooers when they're desperate men* ! 

The souls of dear tempestuous tenderness ! 
What beauty in their fiery natures, when 

They tread highways or wood- walks, to caress 
The traveller's throat or lady's hand ! And then 

They wear so very spirited a dress, 
It quite takes off a robbery's vulgarity, 
And varnishes a murder's cold barbarity. 



VII. 

They may cut throats as fast as cooks cut capers, 
And help themselves to ladies without leave, 

And be deep damn'd in all the daily papers, 
For being so sadly prone to slay and thieve -, 

They may give warmth to ricks and rooms, with tapers. 
And husbands of their amorous wives relieve - y 

Still they've a saving grace o'er all inclining, 

Like one star over Newgate gently shining : 

* The Corsair was but the Slender Billy of the Cyclades. It 
is on record that he was guilty of robbery and arson. 



67 



VIII. 

They love— they pick a pocket—but they love ! 

Their dames too, it may be, are not nun-astical, 
But they are passionate creatures, much above 

Folk that are meek, demure, ecclesiastical, 
Whose web of life dame Nature never wove 

To be eccentric, dissolute, fantastical. 
Your common crawling lives are not worth leading, 
The balmy brutal make the prettiest reading 

IX. 

But to return :— I wish that I could settle 

To tell a tale right out, like Walter Scott, 
Who surely is successful, and must nettle 

Your tale-mechanics : — Whether Bard or not, 
I should be very glad to boil the kettle, 

I know my verse will never boil the pot, 
With annual heaps of profitable rhyme, 
Food for the day, if famine for " all time." 

d 5 



58 



XI. 



O Walter Scott ! give me that sweet disorder, 
Of making first the verse, and then the most of it; 

Send Mr. Constable across the Border 

To take my bastard up, and pay the cost of it. 

Oh, be of me, and not of Hogg the lauder, 
And I will make a profit and a boast of it : 

I'd go as far as Market Street, or Dunstable, 

To pick and split a straw with Mr. Constable. 



I'm not the author of Guy Mannering, 
If I confessed it, I should be a liar; 

Nor is Rob Roy a chicken from my wing, 
But that is not the fault of my desire : 

I should be very glad indeed to string 
A bunch of tales, like honest Jedediah j 

And sell them well, and never more beg alms, 

But take a cottage in the Isle of Palms : — 



59 



XII. 

Or be an Ettrick shepherd in far lands, 

A thing with prudent Scotchmen not uncommon, 

And live and linger there till all the sands 

Of life had pass'd : and with some gentle woman 

Feed the sweet hours with beauty — and take hands, 
And dance, and sing, and gambol, like a true man 

Who scorns to check his money, till he must 

Come down, as honest folks say, with the dust. 

XIII. 

A beautiful high forehead, where the snow 

Is never absent, as on lofty hills - f 
With hair that hath indeed a sunlike glow, 

And wanders round it like its golden rills ! — 
I cannot bend my eyes on such a brow, 

And not forget the world and all its ills : 
I tremble at a star-like eye— and start, 
Feeling the blood-tide rtow upon the heart. 



60 



XIV. 



The touch of the white hand — all white, but warm ; 

The inconstant rose that creeps upon the cheek. 
And sheds its glowing leaf at the soft storm 

Of hurried feelings : — and the lily meek 
Invading where the rose had set its form, 

All these a fatal language to me speak : — 
Fatal, yet sweet — I take it to my breast, 
And feel that knowledge robs me of all rest. 



XV. 

But they, who mean to love, must pay their taxes, 
For gatherers molest us at the door ; 

The gathering, as I opine by praxis. 

Differs on Scotland's and on England's shore ! 

Beauty avails not when the gatherer waxes 
Impatient for the sum of one pound four $ 

She may be exquisite, but he will not 

Take off a penny or relax a jot. 



61 



XVI. 

But how I speculate and stagger on, 

Through stanzas to no purpose and no end ; 

The misery of this measure is, that one 
Can never well and steadily attend 

To the main subject : — but I'm too far gone 
In it, to choose a new one or amend ; 

Besides 1 have no subject — though 'tis time 

There should be one, as ballast for the rhyme. 

XVII. 

The tale I now begin is as romantic 

As any thing in Tom Moore's Lalla Rookh $ 

The lovers are as mystic and as frantic, 

But they're not Turkish — that's against the book. 

I wish they had play'd off some Eastern antic, 
Or liv'd in any Haram's palmy nook, 

But they have not — and I would sooner die 

Than make them oriental, with a lie. 



62 



XVIII. 

Southey would put them into India quickly, 
Make them amenable to wooden gods $ 

But I, who do not wish to act so strictly, 

Would not expose them to such solemn rods : 

They can't be foreign, but they might be sickly, 
Though snug at home as peas are in their pods $ 

There's something grand tho' in Hindoo mythology, 

Yet what to them or me is dusk Theology. 

XIX. 

They were not Catholics, nor Calvinists, 
Nor Swedenborgians, nor yet Armenians •> 

They were not amorous with the Methodists, 
Nor fetter* d heart and hand to the Socinians : 

They were not even, what the state insists, 
Church people in his Majesty's dominions; 

They were, in short, or else their tales belie us, 

Exceeding fond, but very far from pious. 



63 



XX. 

I wish to heaven they had been born in Turkey, 
For booksellers despise an English book ; 

And though I held my head a little perky, 
And cultivated an immortal look, 

Unless the hero's mind and face were murky, 
They'd see me in the Counter ere they took 

A page to sell, although the whole was made for it, 

And deuce a penny should I e'er get paid for it. 

XXI. 

And I am looking forward to the dawning 
Of days when I may breathe a little air $ 

At present I give welcome to the morning 
In Vine Street, Piccadilly, up three pair : 

But if my copy sells, I'll sure give warning, 
And pay the landlord, which will make him stare 5 

For his two rooms are naked, dun, and muggy, — 

And somewhat tatter' d, and exceeding buggy ! 



64 



XXII. 

Besides, it is extremely necessary 

To give the o'er-fraught mind a relaxation ; 
The wisest find it requisite to vary 

Their time 'twixt carelessness and cogitation : 
I hate the smoky, but I love the airy, 

As well as any of the English nation $ 
In fields and woods, if not too near the town, 
I find my mind re-beaver d, I must own. 

XXIII. 

Tis dreadful to endure a worsted climate, 
To breathe an atmosphere of dingy woollen $ 

It is enough to make one place and time hate, 
To render one untractable and sullen. 

I'm sure the effects are dreary upon my mate, 
And I can feel my intellect a dull one $ 

I dread lest strangers should be strange and close, 
or I 

Would seek a better air than fleecy -hosiery . 



65 



XXIV. 

How sweet to feed the pocket with some cash, 
That after feeding you may not look silly $ 

To breakfast first, to next lift up the sash, 
Look at the morn, if cheerful or if chilly, 

And then in joyous mood, but nothing rash, 
Get on a Chiswick stage at Piccadilly 5 

And travel down with a determin'd face, 

To play the devil with the roach and dace. 

XXV. 

To nibble cold meat at the water's side, 
And watch the float, is one of my delights * } 

To see the ripple of the restless tide, 

To tug and struggle when the barbel fights ; 

To put new worms on when the old have died, 
Or try a maggot, as the maggot bites : 

All these are things at which I'm quite at home, 

If such a phrase is fitting when I roam. 



66 



XXVI. 

Or else to lie along the grass and slumber, 
Under the blue sky's summer canopy ; 

Or throw aside the garments which encumber 
A body that delighteth to be free, 

And bathe where lilies blossom without number : 
This is, perhaps, a sort of poetry, 

Which all who lead a life of prose, would find 

A cheap, luxurious pleasure of its kind. 

XXVII. 

But when shall I get on ? — I marvel greatly 
At my own indolence and strange assurance ; 

In verse like this which should be staid and stately, 
I hunt my butterflies past all endurance. 

The lovers whom I introduced so lately 

Are not described as yet : — there's no insurance, 

Upon my life, against this monstrous failing 

Of tacking, when it ought to be plain sailing. 



67 



XXVII I. 

Well — I have told, some trifling stanzas back, 
What sort of creatures my good souls were not} 

And now I'll try, if I can get the knack, 

To picture what they were, and paint their lot. 

My Pegasus is but a bungling hack, 
By no means such a beast as Walter Scott 

Mounts when he rides a foraging in verse, 

Hunting wild characters, if nothing worse, 

XXIX. 

But first I must make known the matchless scene 
In which I place my Poem \ and 'tis one, 

Though little given to trees, that hath been green 
In other days — those days of course are gone. 

It hath its alleys and its nooks, I ween, 
And, by it, waters make a pleasant moan 5 

In it were fought old Battles of Appeals : — 

(Fide the Term Reports)— 'tis Tothill Fields. 



68 



XXX. 

The reason why I quote authorities, 

And give as upon evidence my statement, 

Is that my practice rather that way lies $ 

Though, God knows! it has puzzled me what 
Fate meant 

By mixing me with writs, recoveries, 

Bills, judgments, pleas, and all the things for hate 
meant : — 

But so it is. Though now and then I glean as 

Much time as my betters from subpoenas. 

XXXI. 

These Tothill Fields are by the knowing ones 
Known very generally as Tothill Downs, 

'Tis something more romantic— the name runs 
More trippingly from off the tongue. Most town9 

Have their resorts for enterprising sons 
Of pillage and enjoyment — two mild nouns, 

Which if I must translate, would surely wear 

A fouler meaning— so I'll leave them fair. 



69 



XXXII. 



My heroine's name is at the best call'd Bessy, 
A very laughing, rosy sort of creature : 

The more romantic name of Rose or Jessy 
Was due, beyond a doubt, to her sweet nature. 

Her hair is what the Cockney School call tressy - 7 
And loveliness, like oil, glosses each feature 

Of her round dimpling countenance, and lends 

A quakerish look — but warmer than a friend's. 

XXXIII. 

While you gaze slily at her eyes, you're brewing 
A cup of dangerous mischief for your drinking) 

They look all full of sweet and maddening ruin, 
And do a deal of havoc with their winking -, 

I They're like the darkest flowrets with the dew in $ 
And if you meet them fully there's no slinking) 

I They snare one like the serpent's, till one feels 

I Very confus'd between the head and heels. 



70 



XXXIV. 

Around her lips there is a smiling sweetness, 
Which much inviteth other lips to kissing : 

I wish I ne'er had witnessed such completeness 
Of face — there's not a charm of value missing. 

Her words trip from her tongue with all the neatness 
Of morning dairy-maids, when winds are hissing 

In the early leaves. I would that I were wittier, 

To liken her to something that is prettier. 

XXXV- 

There is no picture in the magazines 

Sufficiently divine for such a face ; 
I've seen facsimiles of cheeks and chins, 

But none with all her warmth, or half her grace. 
Some of the scarcest portraits of choice queens, 

Such as the Scottish Mary, give a trace ; 
But her sweet visage always looks the cosier — 
She's something like Miss Stevens — only rosier. 



71 



XXXVI. 

Her dress— I've said no word about her dress, 
And surely that deserves a stanza wholly 5 

It wreathes simplicity with loveliness, 
And is a perfect alien to all folly : 

You look at her — you look at it no less — 
It throws an air of pastoral melancholy, 

As Wordsworth phrases it, serene around her. 

(I never saw an arm or bosom rounder !) 

XXXVII. 

Tis muslin on high days and holidays, 

Tis "seventeen-hunder-linen" when in common 5 

For its chaste neatness it deserves my praise, 
It lets the neck and arms be seen by no man. 

I like for my part these particular ways, 

And recommend them much to every woman. 

With her fine heart, and head-dress simply gay — 

She's capp'd and jewell'd, watch-makers would say. 



72 



XXXVIII. 

Bessy the beautiful, you needs must think, 
Was not without her feelings or her suitors : 

She was adored by those who are the pink 

Of that wild neighbourhood — by college tutors, 

And sober Serjeants : — privates too in drink, 

While pamper' d by those red kites their recruitors, 

Would ope their minds, when, from the feverish 
drouth 

Of gin and beer, they scarce could ope their mouth. 

XXXIX. 

The highest in the Fancy — all the game ones 
Who were not very much beneath her weight, 

Would take her ivory fingers in their lame ones, 
And woo her very ardently to mate : 

But she, although she did not love the tame ones, 
Was not for men of such a desperate fate ; 

She knew a smart blow, from a handsome giver, 

Could darken lights, and much abuse the liver. 



73 



XL. 

And eyes are things that may be bung'd, or 
blacken'd— 

And noses may lie down upon the face — 
Unless the pace of a quick fist is slackened ; 

And jawbones will break down, to their disgrace ; 
And oftentimes a facer from the back hand, 

Will leave of poor Humanity no trace. 
She, like a prudent woman, well reflected 
On all these things, and dozens she rejected, 

XLL 

But many of my readers may not know 

What *tis the Fancy means, so 1*11 explain it. 

I hope the very learned will not throw 
Slurs on my explanation, and disdain it ; 

The best of language can but be so so — 

Tho* Berkley breed it, and tho* Barclay train it, 

I struggle all I can— I do my best y 

The thing is difficult— but let that rest. 



74 



XLIL 

Fancy*s a term for every blackguardism — 

A term for favourite men, and favourite cocks — 

A term for gentlemen who make a schism 
Without the lobby, or within the box — 

For the best rogues of polish'd vulgarism, 
And those who deal in scientific knocks — 

For bull-dog breeders, badger baiters — all 

Who live in gin and jail, or not at all. 

XLIII. 

Childe Bessy had a father, not forgot : — 
I fear this line is Byron's, and not mine 5 

But he can spare it me, for he is not 
So over honest as to need repine 

At other's thievery 5 — from Crabb and Scott 
Many a golden thought and metal line 

Has he purloin'd. One scarce can keep one's own 

In this abominable swindling town. 



75 



XLIV. 

Childe Bessy had a father, as I said, 
A man of science in his own strange way ; 

He train'd the half, and broke the thorough-bred — 
And fought a match in exquisite array $ 

He kept a bear and badger, and he led 
The former through the streets to dance by day ; 

At night, by candle-light, in cellar dim, 

He chain'd the furry brute and baited him. 

XLV. 

These night-amusements were without cessation, 
And Bruin's fame was bandied far and wide : 

He squeez'd his pesterers to admiration, 
And many a beast in his embrace has died. 

Brutes there brought brutes of each denomination, 
To dip their muzzles in his dusky hide, 

To bay at him from 'twixt the legs, and cling 

By couples at him from the loosen'd string. 



75 



XLVI. 



But this would end; and after its delight, 
Our Bessy's father (surnamed Abberfield,) 

Allowed two dogs of equal weight and height, 
With heads like billiard-balls, to take the field ; 

And truly very fiercely would they fight, 
Scorning, as so it would appear, to yield, 

Wagging most dext'rously their jaws and tail, 

And clinging and caressing, tooth and nail. 

XLV1L 

I never could perceive, and my endeavour 
Has been most earnest, how it is that dogs 

Are made so eager, desperate, and clever, 
Chewing each other into senseless logs ; 

They live with butchers and with brutes for ever, 
And so in manners they become such hogs $ 

Or else they're starved, which is enough to bother 

The best bred dogs, and make them gnaw each other. 



77 



XLVIII. 

(Heaven bless thee, Kate! — to think of thee — of 
thine, 

Is sweeter far than poesy or fame ; — 
And though thine anger'd eyes all alter'd shine, 

To thee my loving heart is still the same, — 
The same, — though left deservedly to pine; — 

In a parenthesis I bless thy name ! 
I bless it early, hopelessly, and late : 
Oh ! what a life is lost for ever, Kate ! — 

XLIX. 

Yet what avails repining — have I not 

Soil'd the sweet plumage of my youthful life ; 

Abandon' d my loose spirit to each spot 

Which promis'd low delights or merry strife ? 

Have I not rush'd perversely to the lot 

Which with regret and loneliness is rife ? — 

The gathered apple in my hand I see, 

Then what avails to wish it on the tree ?) 



78 



The badger there was baited ; which is done 
By letting beasts of courage in, who draw 

The poor domestic creature one by one, 

From his box'd house, by tail, or skin, or claw ; 

lb many this is mighty pleasant fun, 
But I confess I ne'er with pleasure saw 

Such sport — not caring which should lose or win it, 

And shrinking at the cruelty that's in it. 

LI. 

Such were the revelries that chas'd the night; 

AbberfiekTs house was always well attended ; 
The badger and the bear gave full delight, 

Their flagrance and their fragrance were so 
blended. 
Each evening left, if I'm instructed right, 

Legs to be set, and jaw-bones to be mended ; 
And money was there wager'd, as they say, 
Wheedled from simple pockets in the day. 



79 



LIL 

The mind of Abberfield— But I must beg 
Permission to take breath, I've not been idle, 

Or wandering or diffuse, — and now my keg 
Of spirits is near out, and with a sidle 

My weary Pegasus doth lift his leg, 

Seeming to ask me just to pull the bridle. 

I really will : — he must not be distrest, 

Master and horse alike are wanting rest. 

LIII. 

So now I'll stop at Fancy's livery-stable, 
Where Pegasus is taken in to bait, 

(Not in the manner just described) : At table, 
Over my Cape Madeira, I'll in state 

Think over all the incidents I'm able 
For my new Canto. It is rather late : 

To-morrow after breakfast — about ten, 

As Macheath says, I'll take the road again. 



POEMS. 



x 5 



STANZAS TO KATE, 

ON APPEARING BEFORE HER AFTER A CASUAL TURN UP* 



" A black eye in a recent scuffle, 

" For sometimes we must box without the muffle." 

Don Juan. 



All punish'd and penitent, down on the knee, 
I bend to thee, Kate, to avert an adieu : 

Oh, let not thine eyes, love, look black upon me, — 
Because mine are forc'd to look black upon you. 

Am I worse in your eyes, for being worse in my 
own? — 
Are the women to punish, as well as the men ? — 
I thought you'd have brought, when you found me 
alone, 
Opodeldoc and smiles, to restore me again. 



84 

You know I love sparring and poesy, Kate, 

And scarcely care whether I'm hit at, or kiss'd ; — 

You know that Spring* equally makes me elate, 
With the blow of a flower, and the blow of a fist. 

You know as you walk'd one damp evening of late, 
With your beau at your side, — that a bow in the 
sky 

Arch'd its colours ethereal — and surely, my Kate, 
This must be the rainbow I had in my eye. 

Forgive me, — and never, oh, never again, 

I'll cultivate light blue, or brown inebriety - 7 

I'll give up all chance of a fracture or sprain, 

And part, worse than all, with Pierce Egan's f 
society. 

* I am not clear whether Mr. Corcoran alluded here to the 
season, or the pugilist of this name. 

t The author of Boxiana ; — a gentleman of considerable talent 
and unassuming manners. His writings are replete with gaiety, 
information, and spirit ; and there are few authors who have made 
history the vehicle of so much life and whim as Mr. Egan. He 
is an intelligent man in conversation, a clever pedestrian, and a 



85 

Forgive me, — and mufflers I'll carefully pull 

O'er my knuckles hereafter, to make them well 
bred 5 

To mollify digs in the kidney with wool, 

And temper with leather a punch of the head. 

And, Kate ! — if you'll fib from your forehead that 
frown, 
And spar with a lighter and prettier tone; — 
I'll look, — if the swelling should ever go down, 
And these eyes look again, — upon you, love, 
alone ! 

pleasant singer. That man is no contemptible caterer of joy in 
life's feast, who can walk about and collect knowledge, write poetry 
on what he has seen, — and sing it with a cheerful and good voice 
to his friends. Mr. Egan deserves this note, and it is devoted to 
him. 



86 



PETER BELL p. PETER BELL. 



u A bidding, Ma'am, in two places." 

George Robins. 



Two Peters !— two Ballads !— two Bells !— 

Ah, which is the serious Poem ? 
The tales which Simplicity tells, 

Are the tales for my heart, — when I know 'em ! 

But the Lyrics in these match so well, 

And so like is the innocent metre, 
That I'm bother'd to death with each Bell, 

And lost between Peter and Peter. 

Will no one in tenderness lend 

A clue to the positive story ? — 
Or some wretch, in the shape of a Friend, 

May waddle away with the glory. 



87 

Since my mind must some notion be gleaning, 
I'll venture the verses to class :— 

The Burlesque, — by its having a meaning - 7 — 
The Real, — by its having an Ass. 

I pity Simplicity's Poet,— - 

I pity its tradesmen in town \ — 
'Tis a dead drug, and few so well know it, 

As L , H \ R , O > and B— 



88 



LINES TO PHILIP SAMSON, 

THE BRUMMAGEM YOUTH. 

Go back to Brummagem ! go back to Brummagem ! 

Youth of that ancient and halfpenny town ! 
Maul manufacturers^ rattle, and rummage 'em j — 

Country swell'd heads may afford you renown : 
Here in Town- rings, we find Fame very fast go, 

The exquisite light weights are heavy to bruise -, 
For the graceful and punishing hand of Belasco 
Foils, — and will foil all attempts on the Jews, 

Go back to Brummagem, while you've a head on ! 

For bread from the Fancy is light weight enough ; 
Moulsey, whose turf is the sweetest to tread on, 

Candidly owns you're a good bit of stuff: 
But hot heads and slow hands are utterly useless, 

When Israelite science and caution awake -> 
So pr'ythee go home, Youth ! and pester the Jews 
less, 

And work for a cutlet, and not for a stake. 



89 
Turn up the raws at a fair or a holiday, 

Make your fist free with each Brummagem rib \ 
But never again, Lad, commit such a folly, pray ! 

As sigh to be one of the messmates of Crib. 
Leave the P. C. purse, for others to handle, — 

Throw up no hat in a Moulsey Hurst sun j — 
Bid adieu, by the two-penny post, to Jack Randall*, 

And take the outside of the coach, — one pound 
one ! 



* Of all the great men of this age, in poetry, philosophy, or 
pugilism, there is no one of such transcendent talent as "Randall 5 — 
no one who combines the finest natural powers with the most 
elegant and finished acquired ones. The late Professor Stewart 
(who has left the learned ring) is acknowledged to be clever in 
philosophy, but he is a left-handed metaphysical fighter at best, 
and cannot be relied upon at closing with his subject. Lord 
Byron is a powerful poet, with a mind weighing fourteen stone ; 
but he is too sombre a hitter, and is apt to lose his temper. — 
Bandall has no defect, or at least he has not yet betrayed the ap- 
pearance of one. His figure is remarkable, when peeled, for its 
statue-like beauty, and nothing can equal the alacrity with which 
he uses either hand, or the coolness with which he receives. His 
goodness on his legs, Boxiana (a Lord Eldon in the skill and cau- 
tion of his judgments) assures us, is unequalled. He doubles up 
an opponent, as a friend lately declared, as easily as though he 
were picking a flower, or pinching a girl's cheek. He is about to 



90 

Samson ! forget there are such men as Scroggins, 
And Shelton and Carter, and Bob Burns and 
Spring : 
Forget toss for sides, and forget all the floggings,— 
While shirts are pull'd off,— to make perfect the 
ring. 
Your heart is a real one, but skill, Phil, is wanted $ 

Without it, all uselessly bravery begs : — 
Be content that you've beat Dolly Smith, and been 
chaunted, — 
And trained,— stripp'd, — and pitted, — and hit off 
your legs ! 

fight Jos. Hudson, who challenged him lately at the Royal Tennis 
Court. Randall declared, that " though he had declined fighting, 
he would accommodate Joshua;" a kind and benevolent reply, 
which does equal honour to his head and heart. The editor of 
this little volume, like Goldfinch in the Road to Ruin, " would 
not stay away for a thousand pounds." He has already looked 
about for a tall horse and a taxed cart, and he has some hopes of 
compassing a drab coat and a white hat, for he has no wish to ap- 
pear singular at such scenes. 



91 

SONNET 

ON THE NONPAREIL. 

" None but himself can be his parallel !" 

With marble-coloured shoulders, — and keen eyes, 
Protected by a forehead broad and white, — 
And hair cut close lest it impede the sight, 
And clenched hands, firm, and of punishing 
size, — 
Steadily held, or motion'd wary-wise, 

To hit or stop, — and kerchief too drawn tight 
O'er the unyielding loins, to keep from flight 
The inconstant wind, that all too often flies, — 
The Nonpareil stands ! — Fame, whose bright eyes 
run o'er 
With joy to see a Chicken of her own, 
Dips her rich pen in claret, and writes down 
Under the letter R, first on the score, 

" Randall, — John,— Irish Parents, — age not 

known, — 
" Good with both hands, and only ten stone 
four!" 



92 



SONNET*. 



Where lilies lie uneasily at rest 

On the sweet silver pillows of the waves, 
And every pebble like a pearled guest 

At bottom in the streaming water laves > 
When willows hang their sea-green drapery 

Loose in the wooing airs, — and swans are white 
About the coiling brooks, sweet imagery 

Of lovers hearts, inseparable and bright; 
Where grass is greenest in the loneliest dell, 

Fed by the patient sheddings of a spring 5 
And where the flowers are all unmatchable 

In hue and odour — thither would I wing 
My happy spirit, — but the Insolvent Court 
Keeps me a prisoner still, — and mars one's sport! 

* This was a favourite poem with Mr. Corcoran. It only 
wants a meaning to be a perfect sonnet. 



93 



SONNET, 

ON HEARING ST. MARTIN'S BELLS IN MY WAY HOME FROM 
A SPARRING MATCH AT THE FIVES-COURT. 



Beautiful bells ! that on this airy eve 

Swoon with such deep and mellow cadences, — 
Filling, — then leaving empty the rapt breeze ; — 
Pealing full voic'd, — and seeming now to grieve 
In distant, dreaming sweetness ! — ye bereave 
My mind of worldly care by dim degrees $ — 
Dropping the balm of falling melodies 
Over a heart that yearneth to receive. 
Oh, doubly soft ye seem ! — since even but now 
I've left the Fives-Court rush, — the flash, — 

the rally, — 
The noise of " Go it Jack,'*— the stop — the 
blow, — 
The shout — the chattering hit — the check— the 
sally ;— 
Oh, doubly sweet ye seem to come and go $— 
Like peasant's pipes*, at peace time, in a valley ! 
* I fear Mr. Corcoran meant pipes for smoking here. 



94 



STANZAS. 



■ And muttered, lost ! lost! lost!" 

Sir W. Scott, Bart. 



Tis vain to grieve for what is past, 
The golden hours are gone ; 

My own mad hand the die hath cast, 
And I am left alone : 

'Tis vain to grieve — I now can leave 

No other bliss — yet still I grieve ! 

The dreadful silence of this night 
Seems breathing in my ear -, 

I scarce can bear the lonely light 
That burns oppressed and near ; 

I stare at it while half reclin'd, 

And feel its thick light on my mind. 



95 

The sweetest fate have I laid waste 

With a remorseless heart ; 
All that was beautiful and chaste, 

For me seem'd set apart : 
But I was fashion'd to defy 
Such treasure, so set richly by. 

How could I give up her, whose eyes 

Were fill'd with quiet tears, 
For many a day,— when thoughts would rise, 

Thoughts darken' d with just fears, 
Of all my vices ! — Memory sees 
Her eyes' divine remonstrances. 

A wild and wretched choice was mine, 

A life of low delight -, 
The midnight rounds of noise and wine, 

That vex the wasted night $ 
The bitter jest, the wearied glee, 
The strife of dark society. 



96 

To those who plung'd me in the throng 

Of such disastrous joys, 
Who led me by low craft along, 

And stunn'd my mind with noise, — 
I only wish they now could look 
Upon my Life's despoiled book. 

When Midnight finds me torn apart 

From vulgar revelry, 
The cold, still Madness of the heart 

Comes forth, and talks with me 5 
Talks with me, till the sky is grey 
With the chill light of breaking day. 

My love is lost — my studies marr'd, 

My friends disgraced and chang'd ; 
My thoughts all scatter' d and impair'd, 

My relatives estrang'd : 
Yet can I not by day recall 
My ruined Spirit from its thrall*. 

* These lines to me, who knew Peter's faults and feelings well, 
are peculiarly touching. They show that, if he had properly di- 



97 



STANZAS *, 

WRITTEN DURING A VOYAGE IN SEARCH OF A NORTH-WEST 
PASSAGE, AND ADDRESSED TO A NORTHERN PRINCESS. 



Oh ! pretty Polar lady ! 

Doth thy bearded bosom beat, — 
That breast so sweetly shady — 

With an unaccustomed heat ? — 
Dark, oily, Polar woman ! 

Lay aside thy freezing airs, — 
And take to something human, 

In the room of boors and bears. 

rected his mind, he would have been an ornament to society in a 
higher branch of literature. Pugilism engrossed nearly all his 
thoughts, and coloured all his writings — but by this little poem it 
will be seen, that he was in solitude aware of, and grieved at, his 
own dissipated habits 

* Peter was always amused with Captain Ross's account of 
the "re-discovery" of Baffin's Bay; and it was after the perusal of 
a part of the book, that he wrote these lines. 

F 



98 

I'm an Officer ! my jacket 

Will tell thee what I am 3 — 
No master of a packet. 

My pretty Polar dame ! 
But a sailor with old Jervis — 

A man of royal blue 5 — 
Kings send me on their service, — 

And their service send to you. 

Thy Husband, from his swooning 

At thy flight, will soon arise ; 
And go about harpooning 

The sorrow from his eyes : 
And he'll be no more a rubber 

Of wet sockets, — but he'll seek. 
With a wiser kind of blubber, 

To pacify his cheek. 

Thine eyes are dark and roving, 

My pretty Polar sun ! 
Oh, they're very full of loving — 

And extremely full of fun. — 



99 
The Mate attracts thine ogling — 

But, oh, my fair ! thy fate 
Don't now be after boggling, — 

But take me for thy mate. 

The ruby tide is rushing 

To that shadowy cheek, — and, oh, 
So heavenly is that blushing, 

It shames the ruby snow. 
All things thine eye doth snatch at, 

With a kind of amorous fear : — 
Ah, do not steal the hatchet, — 

My pretty Polar dear ! 

Give up ice-fields, where no hedges 

Are full of bloom or birds, — 
Give up bear-skins, give up sledges, 

Give up all thy barking herds : 
Come to England, let me marry thee, 

And trees shall be thy own ; 
And a neat post-chaise shall carry thee 

From Chatham up to town. 



100 



STANZAS, 

ON REVISITING SHREWSBURY. 



I remember well the time,— the sweet school-boy 
time, — 
When all was careless thought with me, and 
summer was my sleep $ 
I wish I could recal that school-boy day of prime, 
For manhood is a sorry thing— and mine is 
plunged deep 

In faults that bid me weep. 

I remember well the Severn's fair peerless flight, — 

How can I e'er forget her silent glory and her 

speed ! 

The wild-deer of all rivers was she then unto my sight, 

But now in common lustre doth she hurry 

through the mead, — 

Her flow I do not heed. 



101 

A copse there was of hazels, — a cloud of radiant 
green, — 
A lustrous veil of fruitful leaves to hide the 
world from me $ 
It seem'd when I was nutting there to be a fairy 
scene, 
Ah ! never more thereafter a fairy scene to be — 
Save in sad memory 

For my school-boy limbs, the river ran riot through 
the night, 
The fields were full of star-like flowers, and 
overgrown with joy; 
The trees around my play ground were a very 
stately sight, 
But some spirit hath gone over them, to wither 
and destroy— 

" Who would not be a boy ! M 



102 

The Towers of that Old House, in which I did 
abide 
When early days were friends with me, — seem 
alter'd to my eyes $ 
They do not stand so solemnly at night in moon- 
light pride, 
As when upon the silver hours by stealth I did 
arise, 

For garden revelries. 

And in the river's place, and the nut-trees, and the 
night, 
And the poetry that is upon the moonlit earth, — 
I have lone rooms, and sad musings, and a fast 
unceasing flight 
Of friends, — of self esteem: — Oh, my heart aches 
with the dearth 

Of honour and of worth. 



103 

'Tis vain to visit olden scenes,— they change like 
other friends, 
Their faces are not now the same, the youth of 
things is gone. 
To others they may yet be bright, — and that must 
make amends : 
The Towers to them may yet arise and frown in 
awful stone— 

The Stream, in light, flow on. 



WHAT IS LIFE? 

LINES TO 

And do you ask me €c what is life ?"— 
And do you ask me " what is pleasure ?" 

My muse and I are not at strife, 
So listen, lady, to my measure :— 

Listen amid thy graceful leisure, 

To what is life, — and what is pleasure. 



104 
'Tis life to see the first dawn stain 
With sallow light the window pane :— 
To dress — to wear a rough drab coat, 
With large pearl buttons all afloat 
Upon the waves of plush :— To tie 
A kerchief of the king-cup dye, 
(White spotted with a small bird's eye) 
Around the neck, — and from the nape 
Let fall an easy fanlike cape :■— ■ 
To quit the house at morning's prime, 
At six or so — about the time 
When watchmen, conscious of the day, 
Puff out their lanthorn's rushlight ray$— 
Just when the silent streets are strewn 
With level shadows, and the moon 
Takes the day's wink, and walks aside 
To nurse a nap till eventide. 
'Tis life, to reach the livery stable, 
Secure the ribbons and the day -bill, 
And mount a gig that had a spring 
Some summers back 5 — and then take wing 



J 05 

Behind (in Mr. Hamlet's* tongue) 

A jade, whose " withers are unwrungj " 

Who stands erect, and yet forlorn, 

And, from a half pay life of corn, 

Shewing as many points each way, 

As Martial's Epigrammata, 

Yet who, when set a going, goes 

Like one undestined to repose. 

'Tis life to revel down the road, 

And queer each o'er-fraught chaise's load 5 

To rave and rattle at the gate, 

And shower upon the gatherer's pate 

Damns by the dozens, and such speeches 

As well betoken one's slang riches :— 

To take of Deady's bright stark naked 

A glass or so, — 'tis life to take it ! 

To see the Hurst with tents encampt on 5 

Lurk around Lawrence's at Hampton ; 

Join the Jlash crowd, (the horse being led 

Into the yard, and clean'd, and fed) 3 

* Not the celebrated Jeweller* 



106 

Talk to Dav' Hudson, and Cy* Davis, 
(The last a fighting rara avis,) 
And, half in secret, scheme a plan 
For trying the hardy Gas-light Man. 

'Tis life to cross the laden ferry, 
With boon companions, wild and merry, 
And see the ring upon the Hurst 
With carts encircled — hear the burst 
At distance, of the eager crowd. — 

Oh, it is life ! to see a proud 
And dauntless man step, full of hopes, 
Up to the P. C. * stakes and ropes, 
Throw in his hat, and with a spring 
Get gallantly within the ring - 9 
Eye the wide crowd, and walk awhile, 
Taking all cheerings with a smile : 
To see him strip, — his well train'd form, 
White, glowing, muscular, and warm, 

* These letters stand for the Pugilistic Club, and not for 
Peter Corcoran, as some might conjecture. 



107 

All beautiful in conscious power, 

Relaxed and quiet, till the hour $ 

His glossy and transparent frame, 

In radiant plight to strive for fame ! 

To look upon the clean shap'd limb 

In silk and flannel clothed trim 3 — 

While round the waist the kerchief tied 

Makes the flesh glow in richer pride. 

Tis more than life, — to watch him hold 

His hand forth, tremulous yet bold, 

Over his second's, and to clasp 

His rival's in a quiet grasp 5 

To watch the noble attitude 

He takes, — the crowd in breathless mood $ — 

And then to see, with adamant start, 

The muscles set, — and the great heart 

Hurl a courageous splendid light 

Into the eye,— and then, — the fight ! 



GLOSSARY, 



Blue Ruin. — Stark-naked. Gin. 

Blunt. — Coal. Money. 

Brown. Porter. — Heavy Brown, Stout. — Heavy Brown with a 
dash of Blue in it. Stout mixed with Gin. — Also, a Penny- 
piece. — A Georgy. 

Buff. — To peel. To strip. 

Boxiana. — The Lives of the Pugilists in 2 vols. 

Chattering. — A blow that tells. 

Chaunted. — Sung of. 

Claret.— The liquor vulgarly called blood. 

Coster-Monger. — A dealer in fruit, and other people's pro- 
perty. 

Damp. — To wet with heavy brown, or stark-naked. 

Deady. — Gin. 

Digs. — Blows. 

Drags. — Carts. 

Dust. — Money. 

Fancy. — (See 42d Stanza of the Fields of Tothill)— Life preserved 
in Spirit. 

Fib. — To get the head under the arm and punch it. 

Floor . — To knock down. To grass. 

Giver. — A punisher. A man who offers a bet. 

Gloves. — Boxing gloves. Ameliorated Leather, 

Half-and-Half. — Three quarters of porter, and one quarter of 
ale. (Exquisite at Belcher's.) 



GLOSSARY. 

Hog. — A shiner. A shilling. 

Inexpressibles. — Br — ch — s. 

Light weights. — Gentlemen under twelve stone. 

Mill. — A fight. 

Mufflers. — Boxing gloves. 

Mug. — The mouth. 

P. C— The Pugilistic Club. 

Peel. — To strip. 

Prads. — Horses. 

Prig s. — Thieves. 

Pull. — To drink. 

Punish. — To beat. 

Queer. — To quiz. 

Raw. — An Innocent. 

Ribbons . — Reins. 

Right Sort. — Gin. 

Ring. — To talk. 

Ruin. — See Blue Ruin. 

Rum Customer. — A tough opponent to bear a beating or to 

give one. 
Scratch. — The line to which the Boxers are brought when they 

set to. 
Short. — Gin unlengthened by water. 
Stark-naked. — Gin. 
Toss for Sides.-— The seconds " shy a copper" before every 

battle, to decide which man shall face the sun. 
Turn up. — A casual fight. 



THE END. 



T, Milter, Printer, Nobte Street, Cheapside. 



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